The Climate University network has formed a teaching cooperation contract between 18 universities. With these new contracts, a majority of Finnish university students can take the network’s climate and sustainability -themed courses.
The first Climate University courses open to all the students at the network universities will start in January 2022 and registration for them is open now. Specialists from the different universities have collaborated to design the instruction within the courses. INAR, the Institute for Atmospheric and Earth System Research at the University of Helsinki, is the organisation administering the network.
– The climate is a convoluted system and climate change will affect all of us. This is why it is vital to increase awareness and understanding. The Climate University is a very good tool for that, says Academy Professor Markku Kulmala, director of INAR.
The first Climate University courses to open are:
- Leadership for sustainable change (University of Helsinki is primarily in charge)
- SystemsChange.now (Aalto University)
- ClimateComms.now / Ilmastoviestintä.nyt (University of Oulu)
The course materials are open for everybody, but to get credits for the courses, you must be registered as a student at one of the partnering universities or the Open University. The courses mainly run online, but in addition to remote assignments, the instructors responsible for each course will offer real-time instruction, as well, and will grade the students' performances.
At the moment, the University of Turku offers three courses within the Climate University. Climate.now is a bachelor’s level self-study course on the basics of climate change offered in Finnish and English, while Sustainable.now is a bachelor’s level course for those interested in sustainable development and climate change. Currently, this course is available in Finnish only. Systemschange.now is a master’s level course guiding students into systems thinking. The course is given in English and organized jointly between four universities.
- We have been building the Sustainable.now and Systemschange.now courses in close collaboration with our partner universities, and both of these courses were piloted last spring. The new contract makes all the courses in the network available to our students, says Geography Professor Jukka Käyhkö.
The Climate University courses are geared towards students, teachers, and anyone already in the labour market, who are interested in themes of climate change and sustainability. The main language of the courses is English, but they are also being translated into Finnish and Swedish.
The network is coordinated by the University of Helsinki. The other partnering universities besides the University of Turku are Aalto University, Haaga-Helia University of Applied Sciences, Häme University of Applied Sciences, the University of Eastern Finland, the University of Jyväskylä, LAB University of Applied Sciences, the University of Lapland, LUT University, Laurea University of Applied Sciences, Metropolia University of Applied Sciences, the University of Oulu, Hanken School of Economics, Uniarts Helsinki, the University of Tampere, Turku University of Applied Sciences, and the University of Vaasa.
