How must university operations be organised in order to master future social challenges? This is the central question of the university's first sustainability report, which lists activities relating to sustainability - and identifies points for discussion.
The report was realised by students under the direction of the economist and Vice President for Young Academics and Quality Management, Prof. Dr Bernd Siebenhüner. The report is based on the standards of the Global Reporting Initiative (GRI) and provides information on activities in research and teaching, the organisation of workplaces, economic performance, the use of resources and mobility.
The students spoke to numerous academics as well as employees from the service and administration sectors - and worked out what sustainable and efficient university operations can contribute to solving urgent social challenges.
"The University of Oldenburg is well positioned in terms of sustainability," summarised University President Prof Dr Babette Simon. Compared to many other universities in Germany, it has a broad and complementary teaching profile for Master's programmes in sustainability. The heart of sustainability teaching, as the report shows, is the Master's cluster "Environment and Sustainability", which is coordinated by the university-wide Center for Environmental and Sustainability Research COAST - one of the interdisciplinary centres for sustainability research at the university, which also includes the Institute of Chemistry and Biology of the Marine Environment (ICBM), the Centre for Wind Energy Research of the Universities of Oldenburg, Hanover and Bremen (ForWind), the Centre for Environmental Modelling (CEM), the Oldenburg Center for Sustainability Economics and Management (CENTOS) and the Center for Sustainable Spatial Development Oldenburg (ZENARiO).
The report also emphasises that sustainability issues have played an important role at the university since it was founded 40 years ago. The early research into renewable energy sources is just one example of this. Even today, the central topics of sustainability research are in the region: in marine and coastal research, renewable energies and sustainability economics, especially with a regional focus.
Based on these topics, new initiatives have emerged, for example in environmental modelling or the economic and social analysis of sustainable change processes. These include student initiatives such as the "NachDenkstatt", which aims to transfer sustainability topics from science to practice, and the "Student Network for Ethics in Economics and Practice (sneep)".
The review of the sustainability report also revealed that Students are more likely than average to do without a car to reach the university - a high proportion use bicycles or public transport to do so. "Despite all the positive results of our sustainability report, there are also areas in which we would like to improve further," emphasises Siebenhüner. Discussion points include the development of sustainability targets, for example to reduce energy consumption or greenhouse gases on campus, and the introduction of an energy management system.
