Title of a project is: Teaching Sustainability in Higher Education in the Field of Economics and Management (acronym: SUSTA). Its total duration is foreseen for 2 years. The reason to apply for Erasmus+ project comes from strong conviction that environmental issues have to be addressed also by economics universities. As a result the main objective of the project is to create an involving concept of teaching sustainability for students of business related studies which will result in raising the awareness and involvement in the problems of sustainability. A leader of the project is the Poznan University of Economics and Business (PUEB). As partners, 5 universities from countries that differ in terms of the environmental concern were chosen. Project partners include: Universidad Miguel Hernandez de Elche in Spain (MHU), Czech University of Life Sciences (CULS), University of Zagreb (UZ), The Slovak University of Agriculture in Nitra (SUA) and The University of Szeged in Hungry (US). 5 intellectual outputs (IO) will be delivered. IO1 (coordinated by US) is dedicated to prepare a strong basis for developing next IOs. The aims of IO1 are to provide a research-based background in order to develop syllabus and teaching materials for sustainability. IO1 is concentrated not only on the analysis of students awareness on sustainability issues, their expectations connected with the teaching sustainability but also on existing university courses on sustainability in partners’ countries. Based on the results of IO1 the syllabus of teaching course on sustainability will be designed as an IO2 (coordinated by UZ). To reach this goal the dictionary of required skills and competences regarding the sustainability will be developed. The dictionary will describe the profile of a student which is aware of running a business in sustainable manner. In IO3 (coordinated by SUA) learning materials on sustainability for students in the form of e-book will be prepared. It will be divided into modules and units according to syllabus (IO2). E-book will be possible to download for free from the webpage of the SUSTA project and from webpages of all partners' universities. Collection of case studies on sustainability will be prepared as IO4 (coordinated by HMU). It will describe real world examples of managing companies in sustainable manner. Case studies will be based on companies from all countries of partnership. Creating movies on teaching sustainability will be the IO5 (coordinated by CULS). The videos of all course content will be prepared and uploaded at youtube channels of SUSTA project and channels of partners' universities. 3 activities will be performed within timeframe of the project: transnational meetings (TM), multiplayer events (ME) and summer school (SS). To ensure the correct progress and successful accomplishment of the project 5 TM meetings are planned. Objectives of ME will be to disseminate projects results, to present and validate of the teaching materials, as well as to build broad network of stakeholders interested in sustainability issues for educational purposes. The aim of SS is to test results of intellectual outputs and get feedback from students to make final improvements of teaching materials. Content of the course will be presented for students by teachers/researchers from partners' institutions. Additional goal of SS is to record videos of the course. The project will be managed according to basic components of PRINCE2 methodology. According to it number of management activity will be taken. There will be a preparation and execution of: Quality Management Strategy, Risk Strategy, Communication Strategy (a crucial part of it will be Dissemination Strategy) and Benefit Review Plan. The project will influence local, regional and national level (in each participating country) in following areas: improvement of the quality of higher education by providing unique sustainability course, increase of widespread use of innovative teaching materials, development of the knowledge on sustainability among university students, raise of the awareness of the sustainability issues among business trainers, representatives of employees and NGO’s, increase of the quality of labour force by highly educated (in the field of sustainability) universities’ alumni. Access to the project webpage (and the entire content) will exceed the time frame of the project. Therefore all IOs produced during the SUSTA project duration will be openly accessible after the end of the EU funding. No time restriction and open access to the IOs will make possible to provide courses on sustainability after SUSTA project ends. These courses will be delivered at partners universities. That will strengthen the durability of the project results. After completion of the project, university institutions from beyond the partnership will be encouraged to use the sustainability materials in their education activities.
Changing the behaviour of business organizations towards reduction of their impact on the environment is a key issue to mitigate climate change. Teaching sustainability in higher business education is crucial to educating young people as the next generation of sustainability-minded business leaders. During their professional career, they will make key decisions for environmental protection regarding the production and use of products, the type of energy used, waste management, etc. The main objective of the SUSTA project was to create an engaging concept of teaching sustainability to students of economics and management. However, this main objective included both direct and indirect goals. Our direct objectives were to create an engaging sustainability teaching concept for business students, consisting of an extended syllabus, teaching materials (e-book, videos and case studies), tested during the summer school and discussed with stakeholders. Our indirect goal was to raise awareness of the environmental, social and economic aspects of sustainable development and to engage students and business teachers in sustainable development issues, as well as to share knowledge and experience related to sustainable development.
Our motivation to apply for the SUSTA project resulted from our strong belief that economic universities must deal with environmental issues. As anthropogenic climate change is shaped by human factors, business organizations should reduce their impact on the environment and greener the economies. To this end, teaching sustainability in higher business education is crucial in educating a new generation of sustainability-minded business leaders. However, integrating sustainability issues into higher business education is challenging because higher business education is typically guided by a profit-seeking logic and efficiency paradigm rather than environmental concern. Moreover, the complexity of perspectives related to the interplay of environmental, social and economic pillars is another challenge here needed to be addressed. To address these challenges, our main goal of the SUSTA project was to create an engaging sustainability teaching concept for business students, aiming to raise awareness and engagement with sustainability issues. Our concept consists of a syllabus, teaching materials (e-book, videos and case studies), tested during the summer school and discussed with stakeholders.