Sustainability in education at Erasmus University Rotterdam means educating about sustainability and educating for sustainability. Educating for sustainability challenges us to think critically about our impact on the world and to develop the necessary competences for contributing to sustainable futures. Through an integrative and critical approach to sustainability, we prepare our students to become agents for positive societal change.
Our ambition
Our ambition is for every EUR graduate to have the sustainability knowledge and competences to understand and reflect on the complex relationship, as well as the conflicts between the economy, society and the natural environment, both in general and from within their own discipline.
We approach this through two complementary dimensions of sustainability education: education about sustainability, which develops students' understanding of sustainability issues, and education for sustainability, which fosters the competencies students need to actively contribute to sustainable development and address complex sustainability challenges. Both dimensions run through everything we do, from curriculum design to how we support our own teaching staff, and are pursued through four connected priorities: integrating sustainability into our curricula, delivering social-transformative education, extending sustainability learning through Lifelong Learning, and empowering our own staff to teach it well.
Integrating sustainability into our curricula
Sustainability is being systematically built into formal learning trajectories across EUR through a foundational module that introduces core sustainability challenges and principles, and through discipline-specific courses that let students go deeper within their own field.
Our current discipline-specific courses include:
- Cheap: A Critique of Capitalism in the Web of Life
- Economic Geography of Creativity and Urban Development
- Economics of Sustainability
- Global Challenges
- Global Development Issues
- Principles of Ecology
- Business Sustainability & Social-Ecological Systems
- Economics of Fashion and Sustainability
- Environmental Economics and Climate Change
- Ethics and Sustainability
- Ethiek, duurzaamheid en compliance (Dutch)
- Global Environmental Politics
- Global Supply Chain and Sustainability Management
- Governing just sustainability transitions
- Governing Urban Sustainability
- Seminar Sustainable Commodity Finance
- Sustainability Ethics & Sustainable Behaviour
- Sustainable Supply Chains
- Achieving Sustainability: Social, Ecological and Economic Perspectives
- Beyond Impact: initiative for sustainable, inclusive, beautiful city-making
- Bildung Climate School
- Civic Studio - Explore Societal Challenges (15 EC)
- Fashion Industry
- Global Health (15 EC)
- Global Poverty, Local Solutions A (15 EC)
- New Economic Thinking & Social Entrepreneurship
- Philosophy of Climate Justice and Societal Transitions
- Port Management and Maritime Logistics
- Public Health
- Smarter Choices for Better Health (30 EC)
- Climate Change, Adaptation and Mitigation
- Engineering for Large-Scale Energy Conversion and Storage
- Environmental Engineering and Sustainable Design
- Future Mobility Design
- Offshore Wind Energy
- (Re)Imagining Port Cities: Understanding Space, Society and Culture (RIPC - 15 EC)
- Sustainable Urbanism: The Green-Blue City
- African Dynamics
- Co-creating a healthy society
- Frugal Innovation for Sustainable Global Development
- Future Challenges Lab: Co-creating sustainable practices in and beyond the Indonesian City
- Geo-resources for the Future
- Sustainability for Businesses, Organizations and Society (SBOS - 15EC)
- Urban Studies in Morocco: Cities in Transition
- Master Economics of Sustainability | Erasmus University Rotterdam
- Master Development Studies | Erasmus University Rotterdam
- Master Global Business & Sustainability | Erasmus University Rotterdam
- Master Societal Transitions | Erasmus University Rotterdam
- Master Online MSc Sustainability Management | Erasmus University Rotterdam
- Master Urban Governance of Inclusive Sustainable Cities | Erasmus University Rotterdam
Social-transformative, impact-driven education
Beyond course content, we're also rethinking how we teach. EUR aims to equip students with the knowledge and skills necessary to examine complex sustainability challenges through engaged, social-transformative education. This is defined as education in which students acquire the knowledge, competencies, attitudes/thinking, and values to identify and address social urgencies in our society. They do this by establishing a reciprocal relationship with the actors involved in a specific societal urgency, and by becoming aware of the ethical dimension of their actions. It therefore focuses on developing students' impact capacity in a co-creative learning environment that offers space for safe experimentation and personal growth. Autonomy, coaching guidance, and maintaining relationships are at the core of the pedagogy.
This approach re-imagines how we teach, by integrating knowledge from multiple disciplines and actively involving societal stakeholders to address challenges through collective problem-solving and critical reflection, fostering interdependence and community empowerment.
Additional sustainability-focused learning opportunities at Erasmus University Rotterdam include:
- Course Earth Economics
- Course ESG Reporting Expert
- Course Sustainable Finance
- Course Driving business towards the Sustainable Development Goals
- Sustainable Corporate Finance (MOOC)
- Online Master Sustainability Management
- Course MOOC Principles of Sustainable Fianance
- MOOC: Local Economic Development
- Post-master Urban Environment and Climate Change
Supporting our educators
None of this is possible without investing in the people who teach it. We equip our teaching staff with the tools, training, and confidence to integrate sustainability knowledge and competences into their own courses.
Through TeachEUR, teaching staff can explore a set of sustainability competencies, including systems thinking, critical thinking, and collaboration, each with ready-to-use teaching activities. A sustainability self-scan helps programme directors, academic leaders, and teachers assess how sustainability is currently embedded in a course or programme, covering both educating about sustainability and educating for sustainability.
For a practical starting point, the MicroLab How to implement sustainability into academic course design gives teaching staff a hands-on, in-person session on embedding sustainability into their own courses.