9 June 2023 – Developing sustainability related skills has become key for higher-education students to successfully address pressing global challenges such as food waste or climate change in their professional future. But how can universities support them in this crucial learning process?
The Erasmus+ co-funded project NEMOS – A new educational model for acquisition of sustainability competences through service-learning, is currently exploring how sustainability can be effectively embedded into food degrees curricula. The seminar on University, Sustainability and Service-learning, hosted by the Public University of Navarra (UPNA) in Pamplona on 6 June 2023, gave the NEMOS partners the opportunity to present some practical cases of how this can be done.
The event was opened by Deputy Head of the School of Agronomy and Bioscience at UPNA, Íñigo Virto who stressed the urgency to rethink our food system and highlighted how the NEMOS project can contribute to this change by, instilling sustainability principles in the students’ mindset.
Iosune Cantalejo, professor at UPNA and coordinator of NEMOS offered then an overview of the project, its main goals and the activities undertaken by the consortium so far. These include the definition of a Food Sustainability Profile (FSP) – which identifies the sustainability competences that students should develop throughout their academic path – and the drafting of a Methodological Handbook (MH), as a guidance framework to effectively develop those competences through service-learning. Currently, the project is developing the assessment tools that will be used to validate the FSP and MH.
The seminar continued with the presentation of practical cases from the NEMOS consortium partners, who have been piloting activities to integrate sustainability competences through service-learning.
Maite M. Aldaya from UPNA offered a general overview of the piloting actions at UPNA’s degree in Innovation in Food Processes and Products, from the training activities for the teachers involved, to the actual service-learning experiences implemented. These ranged from designing an innovation to be carried out at the
university canteen, using the Design Thinking approach, to providing solutions to small farmers of alternative protein sources, or designing new food products with a sustainable packaging to be produced by a social printing block.
Debora Villaño from UPNA focused on the specific case of the course of Nutrition and Health whereby students were asked to evaluate the dietary habits of their peers at UPNA and provide healthy lifestyle and dietary recommendations.
Sami Ghnimi reported how almost 100 students were involved in piloting activities at Rhône-Alpes Higher Institute of Agriculture (ISARA) to help farmers achieve a sustainable animal production system in the framework of the course of Diagnosis in Agronomy and Animal Science. After a first phase of preparation, a few weeks of practical experience at the farm and an in-depth analysis of its of its environmental, economic and social performance, the students prepared a report on the strengths, weaknesses and potential areas of improvement that provided useful information to the farmers.
Orla Cahill explained some service-learning experiences carried out by students of the Technological University Dublin (TU Dublin) at the Dublin zoo, ranging from sustainable sourcing of sea lion feed, to in-house growing food for meerkats and reptiles, improving the water quality for flamingos, or ensuring food safety and sustainability in the kitchens used to prepare the animals’ food.
Michael O’Neill, a student at the final year of the BSc. Food Innovation at TU Dublin contributed his personal experience as an intern at the Food Safety Authority of Ireland and claimed: “Service learning taught me how to carry myself in a professional environment, a multitude of valuable skills, and gave me invaluable work experience and exposure. Working with likeminded people taught me so much about health sustainability, and I would highly recommend all students to seek out service-learning opportunities.”
Annapia Ferrara reported about the initiative How much do you know about sustainability? (Quanto ne sai di sostenibilità?) held by the Department of Agriculture, Food and Environment of the University of Pisa (UNIPI). By applying design thinking, students were called to collaborate with local stakeholders to understand and find feasible solutions to some of their challenges. An assessment was then made of the sustainability competences that the students acquired through the initiative.
Following the individual presentations, a round table took place including representatives of different universities from the consortium and beyond: Sami Ghnimi (ISARA); Orla Cahill (TU Dublin); Sabrina Tomasi (UNIPI); Maite M. Aldaya (UPNA); Natalia Bellostas (Institute for Agrifood Technology and Infrastructures of Navarre –
INTIA); and María Isabel Rodríguez Tejedo (University of Navarra).
The round table focused on the main challenges of implementing the service-learning model for acquiring sustainability competences, the key outcomes and learnings of this process as experienced by the different piloting universities, as well as strategies and recommendations for future implementation by other institutions.
In terms of challenges, all speakers agreed that the time commitment required by this kind of activities might hinder participation of all the actors involved (students, lecturers and stakeholders). Moreover, the poor level of engagement of some students in a deep self-reflection (before and after the activities) might prevent a meaningful assessment of the effectiveness of the activities.
In order to overcome these possible obstacles, participants in the round table recognised the crucial importance of the preparation phase, to make sure that all those involved understand the objectives of the service-learning activities, what is required from them, how the activities will be assessed and, most of all, what will be the benefits of participating.
Besides the opportunities for collaboration, networking and establishing new partnership provided to universities, and the possibility for stakeholders to get solutions to some of their challenges, the benefits of service-learning activities for students are plenty. Among them, the possibility of participating in a transformative experience that allows them to apply and train the hard skills learned in class, but that also equip them with important soft skills (e.g. communication skills, critical thinking, problem-solving, teamwork, self-reflection) for both their professional and non-professional life.
As for possible strategies and recommendations to implement similar models, it appears crucial to include them as compulsory in the curricula, so that they become part of the regular workload of students, who will thus be more inclined to engage and devote time to such activities. Furthermore, it was recommended to integrate service learning for sustainability competences at the university level, and not only in some specific subjects, so that students from different fields are encouraged to work together.
About the NEMOS Project
The NEMOS project acknowledges sustainability as an increasingly crucial skill for graduate and post-graduate students to tackle important global challenges such as climate change, food waste and the loss of biodiversity in their professional future. Therefore, the project aims to define a new educational model to integrate sustainability competences in the curricula of food-related degrees by means of service learning.
Co-funded by the Erasmus+ programme of the European Union, the NEMOS project is led by the Public University of Navarra and includes the following consortium partners: Technological University Dublin (Ireland); Technological University Graz (Austria); Rhône-Alpes Higher Institute of Agriculture (France); University of Pisa (Italy); and IGCAT.
More information at www.nemosproject.com
