Harvest Workshop UM Sustainable Transformation

The workshop on sustainable transformation took place on October 28th, 2021, during the MORSE launch week and brought together students and staff working on sustainability at UM. The meeting’s purpose was to continue a conversation about how to support each other better and to formulate clear next steps.

UM’s Taskforce for Sustainability (SUM2030) was represented at the workshop and briefly outlined its strategy. SUM2030 is working on creating a platform with faculty liaisons working in education, research, and operations.

The brainstorming session included assets such as UM basic features, governance structure, network, community, and existing educational and research initiatives. The participants also touched upon the different barriers UM is facing. For instance, at UM all faculties are self-organized to a large degree which makes it difficult to organize due to different teaching and assessment cultures. Furthermore, some funding structures favour traditional and “safe” projects instead of transformative initiatives. Further barriers are an unclear trajectory, insufficient reporting, and limited accessibility of sustainability in education.

Possible solutions included recognizing and rewarding engagement, transparency via reporting, having a clear vision and plans, focusing more on new education, and more flexibility.

The workshop participants concluded by mentioning some key resources, such as drafting an internal sustainability plan to work on a document with goals and how UM wants to achieve them, scheduling days for sustainable courses and activities, and competencies training for students and staff.

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