ITESM Summer School on Environment and Sustainability 2012
- Event
- Date
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- Location
- Berlin, Germany
On behalf of the Instituto Tecnológico y de Estudios Superiores de Monterrey (ITESM), Ecologic Institute organized and implemented a three-week Summer School from 20 May – 9 June 2012, including lectures and an extra-curricular program for 60 students from northern Mexico. The purpose of the program was to expose the participants to direct applications of environmental and sustainability policy in Germany.
The summer course fell under the curriculum of the Multicultural High School Program of ITESM, which gives its participants the opportunity to travel to Europe and Asia at different stages of their academic calendar with the aim of enhancing their ability to work in an international, multicultural, and interdisciplinary environment. This includes the recognition of the current challenges in the areas of sustainability and environmental preservation encountered by societies in developed and developing countries. Two different campuses of the ITESM network took part in this year’s program, Campus Chihuahua and Campus Saltillo.
The curriculum, developed and taught by fellows of the Ecologic Institute, built upon basic concepts in the realm of environmental studies, shared perspectives on relevant environmental topics and their multi-faceted relations to society, and presented current developments in, inter alia, nature conservation, sustainable lifestyles, and green growth.
The curriculum covered the main topics of the "Medio Ambiente y Sostenibilidad" course (Environment and Sustainability) with additional insights into how the ideas discussed in the lecture room have been and are being developed and integrated into the everyday life of modern German society specifically and within the EU more generally.
Field trips to the energy self-sufficient village of Feldheim in Brandenburg, environmentally friendly urban centers, and environmental organizations provided working examples of the material presented in the classroom. Students had the opportunity to experience firsthand what living in environmentally conscious communities and societies is like, allowing them to draw parallels with how their own communities currently function and ideally leading them to develop notions about how they can improve them in the future.