Universities and other higher education institutions have a critical role in helping society achieve the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), including by harnessing their learning and teaching functions to provide Education for the SDGs. However, the SDGs require deep and radical transformations in each country. Incremental approaches will not be enough to tackle the urgent and complex challenges outlined by Agenda 2030. In order to play a leading role in these transformations, universities will also need to evolve.
Universities have developed sophisticated systems to deliver high quality education and research while remaining independent from political and economic changes. These characteristics often go hand in hand with structural constraints to rapid change. However, the SDGs can offer a framework to guide profound institutional evolution. Many higher education institutions are already embracing the SDGs as a source of transformation and reinvention. But is the sector, as a whole, acting fast enough? And are the changes sufficiently deep, given the pace and scale of change and the timeline signaled by the SDGs?
Join us for this discussion focused on Chapter four of SDSN’s recently launched guide Accelerating Education for the SDGs in Universities!
Agenda
11:00 - 11:05: Welcome
11:05 – 11:30: Transforming institutions
Otto Scharmer - Senior Lecturer in the MIT Management Sloan School and co-founder of the Presencing Institute
11:30 – 12:15: Panel discussion
Wendy Purcell - Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health and former President of Plymouth University
Luce Beaulieu - Executive Director at the Interdisciplinary Center for Research on Sustainable Development Operationalization (CIRODD)
Sarah Mendelson - Professor at Carnegie Mellon and former US Representative to the ECOSOC at the UN
Amelia Clarke - Associate Professor & Associate Dean of Research, University of Waterloo
12:15: SDSN Report Presentation: Accelerating Education for the SDGs in Universities
12:25: Closing remarks