Towards impact + university: Looking ahead to sustainability education at XJTLU in 2025

Presenter: Xuanwei Cao (International Business School Suzhou)

Key words: Sustainability education, Curriculum development

The recent UN report “Transforming our world: the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development” released clear signals requiring integrated thinking, action and coordination at university level. The Agenda identified requirements and opportunities for universities to play a more important role to promote sustainable development within and beyond campus. Universities should and could serve as test sites and models for sustainable practices and societies. Where a university may have the largest impact, however, is with the students it educates.

In 2015/2016 academic year, XJTLU has more than 10,000 students from more than 20 countries. If they graduate with the skills to help societies develop more sustainably, XJTLU will have indeed played a key role in leading Chinese higher education. Thus, if XJTLU ensures to cultivate next generation global citizens, we will have to provide our students with the skills, knowledge, and habits of mind that integrate environment and sustainability concerns into teaching, research, and community engagement.

The aim of this paper is to propose a roadmap towards developing a sustainability education curriculum at XJTLU in the near future through investigating systematically the current sustainability education curriculum development among world top universities.