Featuring our Change Leaders on the global stage: the stories our community shared in key education events
2023-24 has been the first full academic year in which our Change Leaders had TASK™ (The Assessment of Sustainability Knowledge) on hands. These higher education institutions commit to mainstreaming sustainability education, and as a lever for that mission, they commit to assessing the most of their students with TASK™, which is a psychometric assessment covering a broad scope of topics within sustainability.
We were pleased to meet and inspired to discuss “on stage” with some of these institutions over the last few months, so here’s a recap of these events.
AACSB Assurance of Learning Conference
In March, we went to New York with Florent Deisting, Director of Societal Transition at Toulouse Business School, to join the AACSB AoL conference.
AACSB’s Guidance for Societal Impact provides practical guidance on how Business Schools choose their societal impact initiative(s), how to set goals, and how to measure progress towards making a positive societal impact. Florent shared about their institution’s commitment to teach 100% of their students about sustainability, and how sustainability is embedded in the legal incorporation of the school. He further described how TASK™ is offered as pre- and post-assessment for their Master students, as part of TBS’s AoL process.
We also had the opportunity to meet two of our other Change Leaders, the University of Sussex Business School and the American University in Cairo School of Business.
AASHE Webinar
AASHE, one of our partners, is a leading network promoting sustainability education. AASHE’s rating program STARS evaluates an institution’s sustainability performance across education, governance, campus, and more. For its scoring, universities are asked whether they assess the sustainability knowledge of their students, recognizing TASK™ as a reliable methodology. As such, they invited us to present the tool to their community.
We invited Jean-Michel Champagne, Sustainability Officer at HEC Montreal, to share how this Canadian business school is embedding TASK™. All of their incoming students are now asked to take it as an entry-test, which supports their STARS reporting. Jean-Michel also showcased other initiatives of how HEC Montreal works with professors, staff and their alumni to promote sustainability.
AASHE members can watch the recording here.
PRME Webinar
PRME (Principles of Responsible Management Education) is a network and community aiming to transform management education and develop the responsible decision-makers. Following our partnership and our shared mission, we organized a webinar to present our tool TASK™ to their network.
We invited Alison Bailey, Senior Lecturer at the University of Sussex Business School, to share the case study of how this British PRME Champion is embedding the assessment in core module for first-year undergraduate students, and integrating it into reflective assignments for final-year students.
You can watch the recording below!
PRME UK & Ireland Chapter Conference
A couple of months later, we presented this case study in person, at the conference hosted at the University of Exeter.
PRME France & BENELUX Chapter Conference
Across the English Channel, together with Kim Ceulemans, Associate Professor at Toulouse Business School, we showcased how this French institution is offering TASK™ to their Master students as they start and finish their degrees.
EFMD Conference
In April, we received the warm welcome of EFMD at the beautiful grounds of Bologna Business School. Our roundtable, titled “Sustainability in business schools: Measure what is measurable and make measurable what is not so”, saw a full house, highlighting the growing interest in using measurement and assessment to drive transformative change toward sustainability.
We were joined by four of our Change Leaders: Anne-Claire Pache from ESSEC Business School, Isabelle Fagnot from KEDGE Business School, Farai Jena from the University of Sussex Business School, and Joe Miemczyk from ESCP Business School. Together, we discussed how to lever assessment as a driver for change, in governance, campus and education, and left inspired by the positive momentum and acceleration of change in the business education landscape.
You can read the highlights of the conference here.
A global community
Beyond these events, we were glad to meet our community and exchange best practices in many other occasions, including: AACSB Deans Conference, EURIE - Eurasia Higher Education Summit , the PIE Live, the Times Higher Education Global Sustainable Development Congress, INQAAHE Conference, and the UN High-Level Political Forum.
Catch us next!
As a new academic year begins, we are excited to reconnect with our community in the following events:
- PIEoneer Awards, in London (UK) on September 13th
- AASHE Annual Conference, in Anaheim (US) on October 27-29th
We’re also presenting the following webinars:
- AABS: Measuring, Improving and Reporting Sustainability Literacy, on September 18th (in English) and September 25th (in French)
- EFMD: Mainstreaming the SDGs in Business Education, on October 14th
We hope our paths cross in these events, but our team is always happy to meet virtually, so get in touch and let’s accelerate sustainability education together!
