INGENIUM SDG Challenge Lab
The INGENIUM Alliance shares the global commitment to Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) and will take concrete internal and external measures to contribute to it. This includes setting up a Sustainability Committee and appoint Sustainability Leaders, to lead and monitor the contribution of the Alliance to the SDGs. But also, a number of specific actions such as challenge labs.
The University of Skövde hosted the WP7 kick-off event in September 2023. A Sustainability Committee was established. The Committee is working on the INGENIUM SDG/EGD and Global Partnerships Agenda, measuring and analysing the INGENIUM contribution to SDGs. This policy will be adopted in Spring 2024.
The policy describes how INGENIUM’s commitment to both local and global challenges is addressed through embracing the Sustainable Development Goals and the European Green Deal in education, research and innovation, campus operations and partnerships. The Agenda will be a framework to help the INGENIUM partners to accelerate sustainable development in their strategies and activities.
From talk to action
The INGENIUM SDG Challenge Lab will be an open facility to support research, educational or outreach transnational projects connected to SDGs and global societal challenges. The Challenge Lab will start with six workshops given as a course for students within the Alliance.
The workshops will be open to all students at the INGENIUM partner universities and result in 1,5 credit given by the University of Skövde.
The workshops on Sustainable Development will focus on the great transitions:
- Access to energy
- Climate change – biodiversity loss – pollution
- Food system – circular economy
- Digitalisation – mobility
- Education
- Jobs – social security – democracy
Each workshop will start with an introduction to the specific topic, then a researcher, from one of the partner universities will present scientific facts. External actors will also play an active role in the course as they will be invited to talk about their challenges. There will be focus on the multidisciplinary aspects of the challenge. In the discussion that will follow the students will among others gain competences in system thinking and integrated problem solving. They will learn that each challenge will touch every sustainable development goal. This experience will give the students an international and multi-disciplinary perspective to the transition.
For the Alliance it is important to encourage joint interdisciplinary teams of researchers, academics and students form partner universities and partner organisations in the EU and elsewhere. Sustainable development is not to be seen as a project, it should be part of everything we do and all our activities.
