RTU participates in project «European Deans Council for Designing Sustainability Impact Roadmaps» (DECODE)
The European Union’s Erasmus+ KA2 project «European Deans Council for Designing Sustainability Impact Roadmaps» (DECODE) Strategic Partnerships for higher education (2020-1-IT02-KA203-079952). DECODE Sustainability project addresses the need of strengthening the link between HE and sustainability by providing HEIs with a suitable tool-based process to institutionalize Sustainable Development at the department level and contribute to its impact.
The DECODE project, which will last from 2020 to 2023, is led by the Federico II University of Naples (Italy) and Accreditation Council for Entrepreneurial and Engaged Universities (ACEEU), project partner are Catalan Association of Public Universities (Spain), Accreditation Council for Entrepreneurial and Engaged Universities (Germany), University of Twente (Netherlands) and Riga Technical University (Latvia).
Since December 2020 have taken place four project partner virtual meetings. The project partners have made major steps forward, especially with respect to the development of the project’s branding, as well as the first Intellectual Output that will be created as a Baseline Report on sustainability in higher education, with a focus placed on university faculties, departments and schools. ACEEU and the project partners developed DECODE Sustainability website and logo, and visual identity. The website domain name, DECODE-COUNCIL, is chosen by the consortium to represent the nature of DECODE Sustainability: a people-driven and people-focused project.
As one of the strategies used to spilt up the complex tasks of Sustainable Development integration in HEIs academic units, the DECODE project from 2021 April to May organized interviews with European deans/vice-deans to share their knowledge, experience, and insights.
Consortium members continue their collaboration and meet monthly with the whole consortium - to continue decoding sustainability.
The DECODE Sustainability project aims at fostering the institutionalisation of Sustainable Development in university department to spearhead their contributions to sustainability, aimed necessary for addressing challenges in European societies, industries and economies. The DECODE Sustainability project will develop a tool-based process to ensure an innovative, relevant and dynamic upskilling and collaborative approach that stimulates entrepreneurial and engaged thinking and acting in deans, aiming at strengthening their commitment and decisions towards increasing sustainability impacts. The principal aim of the DECODE Sustainability project is creating departmental governance changes that are effective and efficient in the creation of sustainability impact. For this purpose, the project will facilitate the identification and understanding of key challenges and opportunities in integrating Sustainable Development into HEI departments; create a vibrant "sustainability community" of deans and their representatives; dissect the complex task of departmental Sustainable Development integration into smaller pieces (process steps, tools); foster deans’ abilities to integrate Sustainable Development as a corner stone of their academic unit; and create a clear path and decisions to increase departmental contributions to Sustainable Development.
More information: https://decode-council.org/
