Networking: Education for sustainable development

Students, teaching staff and all other members of the University of Würzburg are invited to take part in the ninth "Education for Sustainable Development" (ESD) networking meeting.

The meeting will take place on Tuesday, 10 February 2026, from 16:00 to 18:00 in the Botanical Garden. This time, the motto is "Four years of ESD at JMU: taking stock, shaping the future". The event is being organised by the team of the university's transformation experiment Teaching4Sustainability, whose spokesperson is Professor Markus Riederer (WueLAB).

For better planning, the organisation team asks for registration. Further information and registration.

ESD as a task for the entire university

The University of Würzburg has been focussing on ESD in its teaching for several years. Both legal requirements and the desire from within the university for stronger networking on this topic have led to numerous implementations. These have made it possible to structurally anchor ESD at the university through target agreements between the faculties and the university management, among other things.

The first networking meeting on ESD took place at JMU in 2022. Also in this year, the Bavarian Higher Education Innovation Act stipulated that universities are obliged to implement ESD. Both developments marked the start of the endeavour to anchor ESD not only in individual subjects, but across all disciplines at the university as a whole.

This commitment was also recognised outside the university: in 2025, JMU received the National Award - Education for Sustainable Development from the German UNESCO Commission and the Federal Ministry of Education, Family Affairs, Senior Citizens, Women and Youth for its ESD strategy.

Important milestones achieved

Important milestones have already been achieved or initiated in recent years. These include

• the publication of the JMU 2024 sustainability strategy,
• the establishment of a thematic certificate for "Higher Education for Sustainable Development" in a cooperation between University Didactics at the Centre for Teaching and Learning and the transformation experiment Teaching4Sustainability and
• the development of the digital study programme "Interdisciplinary Sustainability Sciences" at the sustainability laboratory WueLAB.

Setting new impulses together

At the ninth networking meeting, the Teaching4Sustainability team invites you to take stock. In a review, successes within and outside JMU as well as current projects will be presented.

Participants are then invited to get actively involved: Three themed tables will be set up to discuss where ESD currently stands at JMU and beyond. What changes have been noticed in recent years? Where are there successes to celebrate, where are improvements possible and what is still missing?