Blue Engineering and Critical Sustainability by Andre Baier | Interactive lecture and optional in-depth workshops | 24 April
24 April 2023 12:30 till 16:30 - Location: Teaching Lab - By: Teaching Academy | Add to my calendar
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Monday 24 April it's all about Blue Engineering in the TU Delft Teaching Lab! In collaboration with Martine Rutten and Vanessa Schaller from Civil Engineering and Geosciences, the Teaching Academy is organising a a programme on Blue Engineering.
Joining us for this programme is none other than André Baier from TU Berlin- the founder of this educational approach resolving around educating engineers with social and ecological responsibility.
The programme consists of a one hour presentation, followed by two in depth workshops that can be attended together or separately.
Preliminary Programme
| 12.30-12.45 | Walk-in with lunch |
| 12.45-13.30 | Interactive lecture: Teaching/learning sustainability as well as democracy within and through the core subjects of any study program |
| 13.30-13.45 | Short break |
| 13.45-14.45 | Workshop: Numerous inspirations on how to interactively teach social and ecological responsibility within the sciences/engineering |
| 14.45-15.00 | Short break |
| 15.00-16.00 | Workshop: Democratizing Sustainability / Critical Sustainability |
| 16.00 | Wrap up and closing |
Programme details
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After the Second World War TU Berlin was founded on the ruins of its predecessor and bound to promote peace and democracy through its education within the academic disciplines. This spirit is still active at TU Berlin and led to several teaching/learning concepts which reach beyond any traditional method of teaching/learning and which expand the limits of what is seen as classical content.Through this interactive lecture the participants will experience how and what can be done within higher eduction not only on a theoretical level but also how it is practically implemented on bachelor as well as master level and integrated within compulsory core courses as well as within stand-alone electives.
By now, the student-driven Blue Engineering course concept is established at 15 universities in three different countries while the highly interactive Critical Sustainability course reaches over 100 students from over 30 study programs each semester. -
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Blue Engineering is a student-driven university course developed by TU Berlin. It offers a view beyond one’s own horizon and an (inter-)active examination of one’s social and ecological responsibility. It is not restricted to engineering but may be easily adapted to any other study program.Through the workshop-style course concept students add to their specialized knowledge an orientation knowledge and acquire competencies that help them to know their role in relation to technology and society and to shape it together with others. The course creates an inclusive and open learning environment which offers a refreshing alternative to teacher-centered instruction. The course concept is offered since 2011 and already implemented at 15 universities in Germany and beyond and reaches every semester over 350 students.
At TU Delft a pilot course has been run in the academic year of 2021/22 at the faculty of Civil Engineering and Geosciences. From Q4 in 2023 onwards the course is offered as an elective (AE4006) hosted at the Aerospace Engineering faculty and has already had more than 140 enrolments.
During the workshop we will explore hands-on some of the interactive teaching/learning units of the Blue Engineering course which then may easily be implemented at one’s own teaching or may be used to adapt the course format to one’s own study program.
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All major decisions of the past decades have been made by people who have a university degree. And yet, or precisely because of this, we face far-reaching societal problems: man-made global warming, mass species extinction, growing social inequality, and a widespread rise of authoritarianism. Past and existing higher education teaching, therefore, does not seem to be part of the solution, but rather part of the problem. In contrast, further democratization of society seems to be the only chance to overcome exploitative social relations between people, including the domination of people over nature. University teaching should therefore be further democratized and contribute to a peaceful and just global society through democracy education.Through the interactive workshop we will unveil the power structures within universities and the effect they have on decision-making processes. This includes the analysis of the power structures that arise due to the governance of such a diverse body as the university is one as well as the power structures that are inherent to the professor-student-relations.
The activity is taken from the 2018 establied course “Critical Sustainability” which is the compulsory module of the Sustainability Certificate at TU Berlin. Each semester over 100 students from around 30 different study programs reflect and practice democratic decision-making in a transformative setting and intervene into society. The course concept is an example on how to educate for and through democracy within an academic setting.
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About Dr.-Ing. André Baier
André Baier is a philosopher and democracy educator. He has a Master Degree in Philosophy of TU Berlin as well as of Université Rennes 1. His dissertation is on Education for Sustainable Development within the Engineering Sciences. He currently holds a postdoc position at TU Berlin where he coordinates the Sustainability Certificate for Students and is vice chairman of the Sustainability Council at TU Berlin. In addition he is responsible for the study reform project "Blue Engineering - Engineers with social and ecological responsibility". In 2019 the European Society for Engineering Education awarded him the SEFI Francesco Maffioli Award of Excellence for Developing Learning and Teaching in Engineering Education.
About Vanessa Schaller
Vanessa Schaller is lecturer and student at the same time. She has brought the Blue Engineering course concept to TU Delft in 2021 and since has been tutoring Blue Engineering seminars in various settings. She holds a Master Degree in Condensed Matter Physics from TU Munich and has recently visited the National University of Colombia in Bogotá to guide the first Blue Engineering seminar in Latin America. In parallel, she is pursuing a double Master degree in Environmental Engineering and Industrial Ecology at TU Delft and Leiden University.
