University involvement in sustainability initiatives: the missing link?

With an outset in the case of Aalborg University, the linkages (actual, potential and missing) between academic work in research & education and sustainability initiatives are explored. The focus is both on the university's core activities as a provider of research and education and on the university's activities as an organisation, i.e. its own operation and its accounting for this.

Sustainability is defined as a continuous process requiring balance between (the emergence of) problems and our ability and capability to solve them.

Some core questions that this paper seeks to answer are: "How is Sustainable Development understood at executive level at the university? How (if at all) is sustainable development integrated in the core activities of the university? How is the university attached to ‘real life outside the ivory tower', e.g. through the establishing of Public-Private-Academic Partnerships? Are these activities at all at university level or are they going on at staff-level only, i.e. based on personal commitments and opinions? How can the linkages become (even) stronger?"

Furthermore, the case explores what activities are undertaken by the university when viewed as an organisation with environmental, human, institutional and economic impacts and explores how core knowledge developed through research and education is or is not used in this context.

Finally, the paper provides a scenario for opportunities to strengthen the university outreach and for it to become more active in a more integrated and sustainable way, and thus take on a role of being sustainable in a true sense.