TH Wildau Sustainable Mobility Academy

The core component of the Academy was an international and interdisciplinary Sustainable Mobility Summer Academy, which was held held in English at TH Wildau for a fortnight in both 2023 and 2024. The Summer Academy brought together lecturers and students, researchers and administrative staff of TH Wildau, and its international partner institutions, as well as employees of practice partners from the region for lectures, seminars, workshops and excursions.

The Summer Academy was complemented by a Continuous Exchange Network (CEN), which ran all year round and supported not only incoming students and staff on the Wildau campus but also outgoing students, staff, and faculty. The exchange network offered year-round opportunities to deepen and continuously promote the activities and networks in the field of sustainable mobility established and expanded during the Summer Conference itself in cooperation with our international partners.

Beyond the international mobilities to and from TH Wildau, the project also took ownership of initiatives on campus and, in cooperation with other university units, ensured that the interests of internationalisation are closely aligned with those of a more sustainable campus.

These activities are bundled in the cross-departmental Sustainability Working Group, which is based at the Centre for International Affairs and brings together a cross-section of staff and students or lecturers from the two faculties, co-chaired by the Sustainability Manager. The activities of the group aim to increase awareness among all university members about how issues of sustainable mobility affect us all, starting with everyday (international) campus life.

As a basis for the sustainability of the Academy beyond the funding period, it is planned to firmly anchor the Sustainable Mobility Academy at TH Wildau. A working group under the leadership of the Vice President for Studies and Teaching and with the participation of the President, who is also Vice President for Digitisation and Continuing Academic Education at the German Rectors' Conference, is in charge of this.

The structural stabilisation of the Academy serves as a model project for the strategic goal of making the teaching and study programmes more flexible. It functions as a starting point for a pioneering continuing education concept, especially at Bachelor's level, in the course of the planned introduction of a new university unit for "Innovative Study and Continuing Education Concepts" and as a new study offer in the portfolio of the already longer established Wildau Institute of Technology, especially at Master's level.