EUSTEPS

The main objectives of the project Enhancing Universities’ Sustainability TEaching and Practices through Ecological Footprint (EUSTEPs) are to:

1) educate European university students – thus creating a future generation of environmentally-aware and sustainability-minded proactive European citizens – and the wider higher education community (teaching and administrative staff, and management bodies) on sustainability and related topics;

 2) assess and reduce – via a collaborative participatory process involving the whole higher education community – the impact of European Union Higher Education Institutions (HEIs) on the planet’s ecosystems through an advanced use of the Ecological Footprint (EF) concept and associated tools.

 In line with European Union requests, this new generation of sustainable citizen will contribute to act against climate change, for the transition to a low-carbon, resource-efficient sustainable economy.

EUSTEPs thus sets to directly reach out to at least 400 undergraduate students, 100 master students, 8 PhD students, 25 teaching and 30 administrative staff, and the management bodies of the involved universities (e.g. rectors and directors of departments), as well as indirectly expand this audience to other universities within and outside the European Union via the EUSTEPs web-platform (and all the material therein). The envisioned key outputs of the EUSTEPs project are: • a series of teaching modules customized for the 4 project target groups (students, teaching and administrative staff, and management bodies), which are interactive, innovative and applicable at European level and beyond thus contributing to SDG 4; • a University Footprint Calculator co-developed by academics, PhD students, administrative staff, and NGO representatives through a participatory process. This tool will allow users quantifying university’s unsustainability drivers and initiating a process of lowering the impact of HEI (and of working spaces), thus contributing to SDGs 11, 12, and 13. The ambition of the EUSTEPs project is that its outputs can set the basis for an innovative “learn-bydoing” approach that can be later on disseminated and scaled-up for adoption at the wider European level and beyond. Ultimately, the project will contribute to creating a new generation of sustainable citizens, aware of the implications of personal behavior and trained on sustainability and digital tools, and introducing new professional expertise in the society, and in the future labor market.