Congratulations from Tora Aasland
Tora Aasland, Minister of Research
and Higher Education, came Thursday to congratulate the university on the
recognition. During her visit, university officials described environment and
sustainability programmes and how an environmental perspective is integrated
into every aspect of the school’s engineering training.
“This recognition is quite gratifying, and well deserved. NTNU has a long
history of including sustainability issues in their teaching. The Industrial
Ecology Programme is not just the first of its kind, but has also been
recognized as the best for a number of years now. It’s great to know that the
students who graduate from NTNU have the strongest qualifications to contribute
in solving the world’s environmental problems”, says the cabinet minister, who
also took the opportunity to talk with some of the students who have chosen an
environmental focus in their engineering studies.
The report from the EESD Observatory (Engineering Education for Sustainable
Development) was commissioned and conducted in cooperation with the Alliance for
Global Sustainability (AGS). AGS is an international partnership composed of the
Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), the Swiss Federal Institute of
Technology, the University of Tokyo and Chalmers.
A systematic environmental focus
The report evaluated how
systematically universities had introduced sustainability and the environment
into their basic engineering education, the opportunities for specialization in
sustainable development at the master’s level (the last two years in the civil
engineering programme), and whether a commitment to these efforts is anchored in
the university’s top leadership. The length of time that the universities had
worked with these issues was also a consideration in the evaluation. NTNU scored
highly in all areas that were evaluated.
NTNU has many different study programmes that have on their own initiative,
or in cooperation with the Industrial Ecology Programme, have worked
systematically to educate students in sustainable development. A number of
programmes, such as Product Development and Production, Buildings and
Environment and Energy and Environment, incorporate environmental issues early
on as part of their educational offerings. These courses of study, along with
the HES programme in Industrial Economy, Industrial Design, and Technology
Management and Physics, offer specialization that is related to sustainable
development. NTNU was the first university in the world to offer a programme in
industrial ecology, and was first to offer specialization in different
programmes of study, and now also offers its own international master’s
programme – a programme that also attracts its share of good students from the
USA. In 2004, the programme was selected as the best study programme in
industrial ecology.
Strong engagement
NTNU’s recognition is the result of strong
engagement among a number of the university’s professors, who have worked on a
systematic basis over a number of years, and with support from the university
leadership, to develop a meaningful and sound educational offering that answers
the challenges that face modern society. Technology is central both as the
reason for -- and the solution to -- the world’s environmental problems. NTNU
has not just concentrated its efforts on raising awareness about these problems,
but on techniques for determining how different technological approaches can be
used to respond to tomorrow’s environmental challenges without generating new
problems.
Børge Brende: “NTNU is the jewel in the Norwegian environmental crown”
Borges Brende, director of the World Economic Forum, and former Norwegian
Minister of the Environment, congratulated NTNU on its recognition.
“For me this is no surprise – quite the contrary,” says Brende. “Some of the
most encouraging experiences I’ve had as Environment Minister were visits to
NTNU to meet people and to lecture to students and researchers in different
sustainability areas. I quickly noticed that this was indeed the jewel in
Norway’s environmental crown. When NTNU goes all out and works across
disciplines to develop new technological solutions to our growing pollutions
problems, it has to be good,” says the former Environment cabinet minister.
