On December 5 we have attended Global University Climate Forum organised and coordinated by International Sustainable Campus Network and International Alliance of Research Universities. The event was held in dedication to the COP21 summit which took place in Paris as well.
The task for the forum was to come up with a project to make our campus, local community or city sustainable. The call for projects was sent out in September by the ISCN which Aalto University is part of.
The event gathered almost 100 guests - students, sustainability professionals and policy makers from over 20 universities and countries. We were the only team representing Aalto University and Finland at the forum.
The event kicked off with opening remarks from Professor Herve Le Treut, a renowned climate scientist who spoke about recent science on climate change. We then set off to the first poster session where we happened to be the first ones to present.
Having presented our projects to the audience, we then explored other 8 projects in our room. Altogether, 27 projects were presented during the forum, taking 3 sessions of 9 projects each and a huge effort by all the presenters and listeners.
During each session there was an evaluation group of sustainability professionals giving feedback on student projects. The panel included Professor Maria Ivanova, the Director of the Center for Governance and Sustainability at the University of Massachusetts Boston, Zena Harris, Director of Operations and Communications for the International Sustainable Campus Network, and Professor Daniel Kammen from UC Berkeley. Maria, Zena and Daniel all gave generous feedback and spoke about their inspiration gained from student projects and tremendous energy that everyone could feel in the room.
All in all, it was extremely interesting to participate to the event - we’ve learned a lot from our peers in other universities all over the world, how different their sustainability challenges are and what creative ways brilliant students come up with. It was also humbling to see that almost every student team was interdisciplinary comprising folks of different majors just as our team. We’ve also talked to experts and got great advice on our projects and a lot of inspiration to continue!
Stay tuned with our blog here and we’ll let you know of our progress!
The task for the forum was to come up with a project to make our campus, local community or city sustainable. The call for projects was sent out in September by the ISCN which Aalto University is part of.
The event gathered almost 100 guests - students, sustainability professionals and policy makers from over 20 universities and countries. We were the only team representing Aalto University and Finland at the forum.
The event kicked off with opening remarks from Professor Herve Le Treut, a renowned climate scientist who spoke about recent science on climate change. We then set off to the first poster session where we happened to be the first ones to present.
Having presented our projects to the audience, we then explored other 8 projects in our room. Altogether, 27 projects were presented during the forum, taking 3 sessions of 9 projects each and a huge effort by all the presenters and listeners.
During each session there was an evaluation group of sustainability professionals giving feedback on student projects. The panel included Professor Maria Ivanova, the Director of the Center for Governance and Sustainability at the University of Massachusetts Boston, Zena Harris, Director of Operations and Communications for the International Sustainable Campus Network, and Professor Daniel Kammen from UC Berkeley. Maria, Zena and Daniel all gave generous feedback and spoke about their inspiration gained from student projects and tremendous energy that everyone could feel in the room.
All in all, it was extremely interesting to participate to the event - we’ve learned a lot from our peers in other universities all over the world, how different their sustainability challenges are and what creative ways brilliant students come up with. It was also humbling to see that almost every student team was interdisciplinary comprising folks of different majors just as our team. We’ve also talked to experts and got great advice on our projects and a lot of inspiration to continue!
Stay tuned with our blog here and we’ll let you know of our progress!