We are looking back on a successful 2024 Higher Education Summit dedicated to "Co-creating change for sustainability"! From 8-10 September 2024, over 100 participants from 26 countries met at University of Padua to foster dialogue and collaboration among educators and stakeholders in higher education. In its fifth edition, the Higher Education Summit once again brought together old and new friends from around the world. They enjoyed a rich program including workshops, network corners, teaching and learning labs, excursions, social events, and great keynote speakers such as Marco Frey, Enrico Giovannini, Juanita Johnson-Bailey, Isabel Rimanoczy, Umesh Sharma and Arjen Wals.
The 2024 Higher Education Summit was organized by the University of Padua and the COPERNICUS Alliance. We want to say a big thank you to the team of University of Padua for hosting an outstanding conference and their warm hospitality! There are so many take-aways from the conference. Some were already highlighted and commented during the conference on our LinkedIn page, where many participants shared their impressions too.
Sustainable transformations
Transformations are never easy; oftentimes they are disorienting and disruptive. A sustainability-oriented transformation is a journey that looks inward through critical reflection, as much as it is one that reaches outward through collective effort and dialogue and moves forward by searching for sustainable solutions. One key sentence overheard at the Higher Education Summit was that "Sustainability is not a target to achieve, it is a mindset".
The sessions at the Higher Education Summit were connected to the whole-institution approach (WIA), an integrated means to address all educational processes that influence learning. Aligning and coordinating these processes with each other, it drives and stimulates educators to systematically promote learning and find solutions for the problems we face today. Moreover, this approach helps organizations incorporate the principles of Education for Sustainable Development (ESD) for 2030 in an organic and systemic way, with attention to vision, curriculum, pedagogy and teaching, and management of the organization itself, and research.
In this way, education professionals are prompted to reflect on their own learning needs and forge more transdisciplinary collaborations within the university, as well as engage with stakeholders outside their organization. The aim is to achieve the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) by creating learning environments that stir critical reflection, welcome dialogue, and put primacy in transdisciplinary collective efforts.
Proceedings coming soon
Several collagues presented their papers at the summit. We are collecting them and will publish them as proceedings soon. More information will follow.
