From Outreach to Partnership: defining the role of universities in achieving sustainability

Workshop at the ETH Zurich, 15 October 2009

Societies will have to change dramatically if the world is to have a sustainable future. Universities must become more than merely providers of knowledge; they will have to become more proactive, taking advantage of their political and economic neutrality to become engines of change in partnership with policy, industry and society.

The Alliance for Global Sustainability convened a workshop dialogue to discuss how universities and researchers can improve their partnerships with non-academic stakeholders in order to drive progress towards sustainability. The workshop was hosted by the ETH Domain Competence Centre for Environment and Sustainability with ETH Sustainability. 70 participants from the ETH, WSL, Eawag, and the other AGS universities, together with invited participants from external partner organizations, discussed how researchers and external partners can better initiate and maintain partnerships that really implement the results of vitally needed research on environment and sustainability.

The workshop recommendations covered new research models, new teaching models, better ways of doing outreach within existing project management, and new roles for competence centers within universities as well as bridging platforms or fora. Participants felt that to really get incentives for change we need a cultural change within universities, as well as working on more capacity for better partnerships. An example of a lesson learned is that researchers must be clear about their goals vis-à-vis external partners, so that the exchange can bring greater value to both rather than just eating up more time and capacity. The dialogue will be continued, and the results of the workshop will be developed into a discussion paper.

Some resources

There is a great deal of literature on the subjects of science communication, outreach and partnership. Here and in the box are the publications and links that guided the planning of the workshop or are recommended by participants:

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