Sustainability Concept (Whole-Institution Approach) of the Catholic University of Eichstätt-Ingolstadt (Germany)

Kurzfassung/Abstract

German universities today face major and diverse challenges in meeting the current and future expectations of society (Barlett and Chase 2013).On the one hand, students have to fulfill the requirements of current labor markets, on the other hand, the university itself as an educational institution and company should act as a role model. The concept of sustainable development and education for sustainable development currently represents an approach that universities around the world and especially in Germany are increasingly adopting. In Germany, some universities have already made progress in the process of adopting the whole-institution approach and can serve as a model for other universities on their way to becoming more sustainable. The aim of this article is to present the KU as a positive example of a German university that has been on the path towards becoming a more sustainable university for ten years and thus, according to Leal Filho (2009), belongs to the group of universities that have made a long-term commitment to sustainability. It should be emphasized that, in addition to research and teaching, the focus is on four furtherfields of action in connection with sustainability (governance, student initiatives andcommitment, campus management and operations, and transfer) for implementation of a whole-institution approach. This stringent approach is still too rare in Germany in this scope and complexity (HRK2017).