Sustainable development is one of the greatest challenges faced by today’s society. WU – the Vienna University for Economics and Business – accepts this challenge. WU is committed to the principle of sustainability and is determined to bring it to life. It applies the principles of sustainability to teaching, research, knowledge transfer and university management so that as a university it can fulfil its responsibility to society. WU’s activities have an impact on the sustainable development of society in many important ways. WU’s research topics and the methods and approaches used, the ideas our students take away with them, how the campus is organized – all these factors have an effect on society. WU’s campus is designed to be a working environment for 25,000 students and 1,500 teachers, researchers and administrative staff. The environmental management system is certified according to ISO 14001 and EMAS. As the largest business and economics university in Europe and Austria’s leading institution for the training of business leaders, WU can make a sustainable difference.
The Competence Center for Sustainability has several public events like the NachhaltigkeitsKontroversen (“SustainabilityControversies) is an event series aiming at adding controversy and clear thinking to the public debate about sustainability. This series of talks dubbed “Tiefenbohrungen: Wirtschaft anders denken” (“Deep drillings: Thinking differently about the economy) aims at subjecting key economic issues and approaches to far-reaching, critical scrutiny.
Furthermore a close contact student organizations is maintained, inter alia, the Austrian Students’ Union (ÖH) and oikos Vienna, to organize sustainability-related events, like the annual “sustainability day”.
The Regional Centre of Expertise on Education for Sustainable Development Vienna (RCE Vienna) is affiliated to the Institute for Ecological Economics and hosted by WU Vienna. As a science-society interface the RCE Vienna focuses on transformative learning in order to enable citizens to actively shape a sustainable development. The RCE works on a number of research and implementation projects in areas such as service learning, impact assessment or sustainability driven entrepreneurship. As a regional actor, the RCE has vast experience in transdisciplinary learning environments and a vast network of collaborators.
