GRONEN Teaching Sustainability
The GRONEN Teaching Sustainability Team mission is to support the GRONEN network in the transformation of the educational context to address societal grand challenges. Our aim is to share new ways of seeing and doing sustainability that better adapt to our students and the current times. In addition, the GRONEN Teaching Sustainability Team aims to lend teaching support and exchange of new teaching methods, resources, best practices and experiences among the GRONEN network. The GRONEN Teaching Sustainability Team will held events and activities such as:
– Professional development workshops at the GRONEN Conference
– Professional development workshops onsite and online
– Sharing teaching resources
Teaching Group New Members
Since February, the teaching team has had two new members, Rachel Brooks and Rob Lubberink.
Welcome to the team!
Rachel Brooks is Head of Curriculum Development for Responsibility & Sustainability, Program Director, and Lecturer at the University of St.Gallen. Her research focuses on place-based and transformative learning for responsible leadership and sustainability in management education. Previously, she led executive education at the Competence Center for Social Innovation at the same University, supporting leaders across sectors in acting on global grand challenges in an environment of mounting complexity and uncertainty. Rachel has worked and conducted research in Latin America and Europe on sustainability strategy development and cross-sector collaboration at the nexus of business, agricultural producers, government, and non-profit organizations. She holds a bachelor’s degree in Latin American and Latino/a Studies from Smith College, a master’s degree in Latin American and Caribbean Studies from New York University, where she was awarded the Henry MacCracken Fellowship, and a PhD in Organization Studies and Cultural Theory from the University of St.Gallen, from which she graduated magna cum laude.
Rob Lubberink is an assistant professor at the Amsterdam University of Applied Sciences and co-developer of its Master’s programme in Economic Transformation. This programme introduces young professionals to 21stcentury economic thinking and prepares them to lead transitions to just, sustainable, and resilient economic systems. As an engaged scholar, he actively builds connections between research, teaching, and impact-driven enterprises, ensuring that each informs and strengthens the other. His current research focuses on organizational networks for regenerative social-ecological systems. He has a long-standing interest in entrepreneurship as a force for good, reflected in his PhD on responsible innovation in social enterprises and his ethnographic fieldwork on smallholder entrepreneurship in farmers’ collectives in Malawi. Rob’s work has been published in journals such as Entrepreneurship Education & Pedagogy, the Journal of Responsible Innovation, the Journal of Social Entrepreneurship, Business & Society, and Organization Studies.
Revitalize your Teaching on Sustainability – Best Practices and Novel Approaches
13 October 2023
The multi-faceted challenges the global community currently faces require a deep reflection on the way we teach sustainability and on our role as teachers. The climate crisis, energy security, and food accessibility have all become intertwined and lead to competing priorities in business and society. For teachers at business schools and technical universities, this raises important questions: Do the management models and decision-making heuristics we teach still fit this reality? How can we design new sustainability-related syllabi and refresh our teaching approaches? The aim of this workshop is to bring together experienced teachers as well as those starting to teach to generate a debate on revitalizing sustainability teaching. The format is interactive, including panel and roundtable sessions which provide a platform to discuss current topics and reflect on their own teaching approach.
