4TU.Responsible Sustainability Challenge

Within the 4TU.RSC track, students from Delft and Eindhoven Universities of Technology and the University of Twente work together on a real-life challenge regarding sustainability. After matching with a case, you will work together with your team to investigate and address an issue regarding sustainability at an external organisation. Through the course of 3 modules, you provide an unbiased, professional, and academic look into the broad issue that the organisation provides you with to determine the exact underlying problems you can address. You also shape your own learning path and team contribution through our expert network and micro-courses. This challenge will improve your professional capabilities and can help you make a difference both for your personal growth as well as within the organisation you are working with. A true challenge for excellent students!

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Specific information for each university

Each university will provide the students with more information. Check the local websites and students' environments for the course design, the syllabus and information on application and admission.

University of Twente:
Website: UTwente Honours Programme, including information about Application and Admission
Registration: before 20 October 2024
Eindhoven University of Technology:
Website: Professional development component of the Honors Master Program.
Registration: contact the TU/e Honors Academy
Delft University of Technology: TU Delft Honours Programme Master
Registration: check Brightspace for more information!

The 4TU.Responsible Sustainability Challenge (4TU.RSC) is an initiative of three 4TU.Centres: 4TU.High-Tech Materials, 4TU.Energy and 4TU.Ethics & Technology. In the second edition of the 4TU.RSC also the 4TU Alliance on Energy Acces was involved; they have representatives in the core team.

Time line - 4TU.RSC 2024-2025

Course design (2nd edition) - to be updated

Highlights

This project aims to approach the development and implementation of sustainable technology in a multidisciplinary manner, with an emphasis on energy, materials and ethics.
Each group (multidisciplinary, 5-8 students) chooses a topic that is related to developments in technology aiming at increasing sustainability in society; topics in this project relate to the Green Deal of the European Union.
Leadership skills: students formulate their own challenge and look for their own experts.
External stakeholders adjust the challenge to the real-life casus, ensuring relevance to the here-and-now, non-academic context.
Academic experts safeguard the quality, scope, and feasibility.

Core team

Course motivation

From a student’s perspective, this module fills a current need for a practically oriented educational programme that highlights multidisciplinary collaboration. In particular, excellent Master (Honours) students want to improve their leadership/teamworking skills and gain real-life project-based experience in a structured and guided way. This module allows students to step outside their own university and study fields and to put theoretical knowledge into practice. The course is built on the challenge-based learning principles and asks students to drive their own education to gain the knowledge and skills that fit with their individual needs. The module focuses on the topic of sustainability, which is a topic that unites students from all different backgrounds and which sparks tremendous enthusiasm within the student community. The module also brings together staff, student assistants and experts from the four technical universities to increase further collaboration and knowledge-sharing.

Core elements

Within the 4TU.RSC track, the focus is on providing students with a structured approach to implement or improve sustainability efforts within organisations. Students work together with their peers from the other participating universities (Twente, Delft and Eindhoven) in multidisciplinary groups. The challenge consists of the following core elements.

The central challenge to implement or improve sustainability at a company/organisation. Within this challenge, you work within a multidisciplinary team of 5-8 students to understand the underlying principles and issues at hand and to formulate an appropriate respond that addresses these points. This challenge follows the Challenge-Based Learning methodology, which provides students with a structured but free approach to learning by gaining real-life experience.
Workshops and lectures are provided to help structure the challenge and to provide key insights into relevant project management techniques and sustainability efforts that broaden the students' view and help determine creative and motivated methods to address the key issues of the challenge. The workshops extend throughout the modules in online sessions, and on live events organized with our partners. Additionally, due to the small-scale education, we can aid the students during their individual investigation with micro-lectures and additional expert sessions from our diverse network across universities.
Coaching for each group to support the learning process and improve the personal development of each student.
Peer review support from your fellow students to learn both with and from one another, to meet like-minded people and to shape each case by the shared knowledge of the group.

“For students, it’s becoming more and more important to learn and to show that you are able to work in a multidisciplinary team on subjects that transcend your regular education. In addition, the current work environment is asking young professionals for skills that can only be gained through practical work experience. That is why this module is particularly interesting for ambitious and excellent students. There’s a student-driven setup to the entire module with the flexibility to let you work on a project within a real-world setting. In the project, you will have a stakeholder to satisfy and a team to bring together in order to solve the problem, and it is great to practice these skills in a guided and structured way. Finally, working on the topic of sustainability together with a group of enthusiastic peers will certainly be a valuable and rewarding experience!”