Wednesday, November 3rd, 2021 has marked the official start of the DECODE - European Deans Council for Sustainable Development.
In one and a half hour event featuring a special guest speaker, the Deans Council celebrated its founding with an interactive and insightful webinar on the objectives of the project, the importance of the initiative and the core values, vision and mission of the Council itself. The webinar was attended by 10 panellists, the project core team members and the guest speaker, and 37 Council founding members and moderated by Victoria Gómez from ACUP-GUNi .
The launch started with a brief introduction of the DECODE Sustainability project presented by Dr. Mariarosalba Angrisani from LUPT at the UNIVERSITY OF NAPLES FEDERICO II, ITALY. The webinar was then continued with an insightful session delivered by the guest speaker, Prof. Charles A. Hopkins, UNESCO Chair in Reorienting Education towards Sustainability at York University and followed by an informative Q&A session. Prof. Hopkins highlighted how the vision and mission brought forward by the project connects the gap in the current development of Sustainable Development (SD) in higher education (HE) and shared with the attendees some informative knowledge on how to further drive the integration of SD within academic units of HE institutions.
Prof. Dr. Thorsten Kliewe, CEO of ACEEU, also had the opportunity to share the core objectives of the Deans Council and its platform, DECODE Connect. Prof. Kliewe also invited the founding members to explore the platform and begin their contributions by nominating themselves to fill in the positions in the Council Leaderships and becoming the founding Council Chair and Vice-Chairs. Dr. Ben Jongbloed and Anete Veidemane from CHEPS at the University of Twente continued the webinar by sharing some insights on HEI Sustainability Analysis gained from the project’s first work package.
Although the event was set up in a webinar mode, the interactiveness of the event was ensured. Prof. Dr. oec. Elina Gaile-Sarkane and Gundars Kokins from Riga Technical University led the interactive activity which aimed to capture the wishes and needs of the founding members of the Council. The launch event was concluded with reminders of the Council next steps and the key takeaways delivered by the DECODE project coordinator and the director of LUPT at UNIVERSITY OF NAPLES FEDERICO II, ITALY, Prof. Dr. Marina Albanese.
On behalf of the project team, ACEEU would like to say thank you once again to the special guest speaker, Prof. Charles Hopkins, and to all founding members who attended the event. The project team members look forward to opening more opportunities through this collaboration and creating pathways and specific steps to promote positive changes.
For more information about the event and the project, kindly visit DECODE Website .
';
';
