“The university has been working in the fields of environment and climate protection for many years”, stressed Martin Mehrtens, Director of Finance and Administration at the university. “The topic of social sustainability has also been a main focus of the university since the start.” The campus activities are diverse. They span from marine research to sustainable management. Furthermore, there are also lecture series, for example on global sustainability targets, and digital seminars at the Virtual Academy of Sustainability. A cooperative society for solar power founded by university employees is another successful initiative. For several years, “Uni Bremen SOLAR” has been producing ecological electricity using photovoltaic systems on University of Bremen buildings.
New Sustainability Forum at the University
In order to bundle the numerous activities even more, align them strategically and to encourage new initiatives, the Director of Finance and Administration has established a sustainability forum. “Sustainability will continue to play an important role at the university in the future”, according to Mehrtens. Especially the global sustainability targets of the UN are to be made more visible in the future and are to be fed into the university’s approach.
“HOCH-N shows that something is changing in the academic landscape”, underscored Georg Müller-Christ, professor of sustainable management at the University of Bremen. The academic and his employees are a part of the project by conviction, as he explains. “The university must learn to develop new patterns of thinking in order to handle the challenges of our time.” The University of Bremen had to date not been a part of the HOCH-N network as a whole organization member, but rather as a partner university in the areas of networking and teaching.
About the HOCH-N Sustainability Network
HOCH-N is a cooperative project funded by the Federal Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF) with 2.5 million euros. The project carries out research into sustainability and builds a collegial network. Six guidelines, which were developed in the past two years, are to help universities integrate the difficult subject of sustainability into all areas of higher education. The BMBF wants sustainability to become an important topic in all fields, from teaching to facility construction.
Alongside the collaborative project, universities in the HOCH-N sustainability network are invited to learn from each other and promote the sustainable development of their institutes together. The network currently brings together partners from 100 universities from Kiel to Constance. This covers nearly one quarter of all German universities. The aim is to significantly support the sustainable evolution of higher education institutes by means of collegial communication.
Further project information:
https://www.hochn.uni-hamburg.de/en.html
www.uni-bremen.de/unibremensolar (in German only)
www.uni-bremen.de/en/
Contact:
Prof. Dr. Georg Müller-Christ
Professor of usiness studies / sustainable management
Faculty of Business Studies and Economics
Phone: +49 421 218-66780
Email: gmcprotect me ?!uni-bremenprotect me ?!.de
Dr. Martin Mehrtens
Director of Finance and Administration
Outer office: Bettina Döring
Phone: +49 421 218-60101
Email: sekrkanzprotect me ?!uni-bremenprotect me ?!.de
