What is the institute’s overall culture of sustainability and their long-term vision for the future?

The institute’s mission is divided into humanistic, sustainable and entrepreneurial pursuits. Leuphana approaches sustainability as a principle of action lived throughout the institute, across research, teaching, society, and the university campus. Their educational approach focuses on students’ capacity to be an informed societal agent of change.

How does the institute translate their sustainability vision into a sustainability agenda?

The university uses the guiding principle of the Bologna process to integrate Education for Sustainable Development principles across the curriculum and specific structures to foster inter- and transdisciplinary competencies.Leuphana follows institutional guiding principles on humanism, sustainability and action orientation.

What are the institute’s short-term practices and programmes which achieve their sustainability mission?

The university has implemented the Leuphana Semester into the overall educational curriculum, thus impacting the entire student population and structure/function/operation of the academic year. The Leuphana Semester starts with a common opening week to the academic year, serving as both a practical workshop and a forum for ideas. Students work together in groups on a societally-relevant project. The core of the Semester consists of five mandatory thematically linked modules, covering Responsibility, Criticism, Research Methods as well as an introduction to their major or subject area(s). A centerpiece of the first semester is a sustainability-focused research project that students plan, implement, and evaluate in small groups, applying the pedagogy of inquiry-based learning. The culmination of the research cycle in the first semester is a 3-day academic conference where all 1,200+ students present their research findings.

What is the culture of sustainability at the country-level?

In their Climate Action Programme 2030 and the Climate Act, Germany has made a binding undertaking to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 55 per cent by 2030, achieve neutrality by 2045, diminish the use of coal to generate electric power, and restructure mobility. Hence, fostering sustainable innovation, new technologies and mitigation (especially in the mobility sector) are imperatives for the national agenda.

In which regional context is the institution situated, and what is their policy or activities of integration within the broader community?

Leuphana university is located in Lüneburg, Germany, in the northwestern state of Lower Saxony, a predominantly rural and agricultural state, with a history of coal extraction. The state has an ambitious climate policy to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 90% relative to 1990 by 2035. The city, in collaboration with Leuphana, was awarded funding for its sustainability plan ‘City of the future 2030+’, an ambitious project to co-create urban sustainability and create a community of learning for SD.

What is the institutional context of engaging with sustainability and experimenting with reorganisation or alternative governance approaches?

Leuphana university was founded in 1946 as a teaching college in a post-WWII context, and only transformed into a university in 1989. It is a young university with a history of reorganization and organizational flexibility. The entire faculty structure was reorganized several times, which led to the first Faculty of Sustainability in Europe.