.HESI Special Event: Where Next? Reimagining Further Education for the Future
OPEN sustainability osun.app abeduni.com NY tik-tok-sdg youth- 9 schools years to rise

Sunday, January 31, 2021
new uni most exciting debate in 2020 reprise -thank you michael crow
Saturday, January 30, 2021
CROW UPD BEV 2021
Opinion: The untapped role of universities in scaling innovation
By Michael M. Crow // 15 February 2021As institutions tasked with the specific purpose of generating, synthesizing, and transmitting knowledge, research universities play a unique role in national and global innovation systems. Through new forms of engagement with the broader development community — especially donors and global foundations — innovative universities throughout the world can, and must, work together to co-create solutions to local challenges and scale them up to meet the needs of the world’s most vulnerable.
Donor agencies have long looked to universities for their obvious expertise in higher education; but what has become clearer — especially in the past decade — is that those committed to global development can work alongside higher education institutions in low- and middle-income countries to co-create research-based, socially responsive, and scalable innovations. Global research universities must prioritize engagement and collaboration with universities and stakeholders throughout these countries to help build their capacity to lead in research and innovation-led solutions to solve core societal problems.
Q&A: How COVID-19 can help reshape access to higher education
While COVID-19 has generated the most severe disruption to global education in history, it has also presented new opportunities. Devex spoke to ASU’s vice president of global academic initiatives about how the pandemic is reshaping access to higher education.
Governments and funders — including aid agencies, foundations, and corporations — should support these efforts through strategies and initiatives that fully engage the immense knowledge creation capacity of universities to address poverty reduction, public health, access to education, economic growth, governance, and sustainability.
Scaling solutions through local higher education institutions
Designing solutions that work at social scale requires precise alignment between the vision of innovators and complex real-world demands across many different contexts: local higher education institutions are ideally situated to understand needs and opportunities within their own communities. Although these institutions are closely connected to government ministries and bring expertise across disciplines, they often lack the financial, organizational, and infrastructural capacity for solutions-oriented research that can be translated into impact at the national, regional, and global level.
Many top research universities bring significant assets for strengthening the ability of higher learning institutions in LMICs to meet these demands. Spanning education, research, government, and the private sector, forward-thinking research universities bring vast networks and connectivity to many organizations, and increasingly, their reach extends globally.
The most effective global research universities have designed pathways for moving innovations into society through innovative approaches to research translation, technology transfer, organizational design, and programming. These approaches can be adapted to partner with and strengthen higher education institutions in LMICs.
The role of universities in tackling social challenges
Although universities have been engaged in development implementation for decades, some of their most significant advantages — in comparison to traditional implementers — remain underutilized. First, they are uniquely suited to help institutions in LMICs become more effective, not only in teaching and learning, but also in restructuring research enterprises and mounting effective responses to economic and social needs.
Secondly, they bring experience in translating research into action through partnerships, entrepreneurship, and engagement with communities.
Finally, they can act as enduring partners to local universities and communities long after projects are concluded, creating opportunities for future collaborations, coordinating and enabling access to international resources, and driving equitable knowledge exchange over the long term.
An increasing number of universities throughout high-income countries are already partnering with higher education institutions in LMICs to build capacity to respond to national and regional development challenges. Universities such as Arizona State University and the member institutions of the PLuS Alliance, for example, have not only redesigned their own operations to have a transformative impact on society, but are also committed to working with other universities to design new innovative approaches to meet the needs of the communities and countries they serve.
ASU has partnered with the U.S. Agency for International Development, the Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology, and civil society and private sector partners to strengthen the university’s capacity to support effective supply chains in Ghana and across Africa. Strengthening supply chain knowledge and capacity helps support the massive efforts of governments and communities across health, food security, and economic growth.
ASU is also advancing these partnerships within the framework of “university design” — the application of design principles to the missions, operations, and cultures of higher education institutions to allow them to meaningfully address societal challenges. ASU is catalyzing transformation in global higher education through the University Design Institute, which has already worked with over 60 institutions in 15 countries to co-create locally driven approaches to address development challenges.
Realizing the full potential of universities as development actors requires universities in high-income countries to make bold commitments to global engagement and to intentionally leverage their knowledge and resources to support institutions in emerging countries. Donor organizations and agencies also play a key role in enabling partnerships that foster scalable, local innovation. Through new and expanded opportunities and programs, donors and institutions of higher learning across the world can collaborate to help the universities become leaders in local and regional development.
Catch up on Devex World 2020 conversations and insights.
Monday, January 18, 2021
Sunday, January 17, 2021
economistdiary.com 2021 - which events offer humans 3rd and last chance to love each other enough to sustain all children
HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES-Wednesday, April 19, 1978
Sunday, December 6, 2020
towards cases composing an sdg curriculum
Monday, November 23, 2020
UPDATE FROM BRAC UNI VC VC
Facilitating online education at Brac University has been one of Vice-Chancellor Professor Vincent Chang’s most important responses to the Covid-19 pandemic. Virtual classes and the introduction of buX will path ways to the next generation of learning and teaching. Recently, he has been taking steps to strengthen the university’s ties with our international partners.
UK High Commissioner supporter of higher education in Bangladesh
The British High Commissioner to Bangladesh Robert Chatterton Dickson invited Professor Chang and VP International Jonathan Cartmell to his residence last week. The meeting was held under strict precautions due to the ongoing pandemic. Together with the Country Director of British Council Tom Miscioscia, they decided to establish a liaison between British universities and Brac University. The United Kingdom will help to improve higher education in Bangladesh. Such educational endeavours will greatly impact the international culture at the Brac University.
(from left to right: Jonathan Cartmell, Tom Miscioscia, Robert Chatterton Dickson, Vincent Chang)
OSUN opening up new opportunities for Brac University
In the spirit of internationalization and online education, Professor Chang stayed closely connected to the Open Society University Network (OSUN) leadership team during lockdown. The network actively promotes virtual education and a lively exchange between the partnering institutions. Brac University was able to offer summer online classes to its students with renown institutions like Princeton University, Bard College and Central European University.
(from left to right: Jonathan Becker, Leon Botstein, Vincent Chang)
While maintaining social distance and taking precautions, Professor Chang visited Jonathan Becker, Vice-Chancellor of OSUN, and Leon Botstein, President of Bard College, a few weeks ago in Annandale-on-Hudson, New York, USA. Bard College functions as the basis of OSUN and connects the partners and their initiatives. The three leaders spoke about the successful launch of the network, despite the challenges that the Covid-19 pandemic provided. OSUN links up universities and research institutions globally, which naturally places it in a position to communicate virtually. So, the restrictions imposed by the pandemic didn’t hamper the network’s mission. Going forward, Professor Chang discussed multiple collaborations with Brac University that will improve its educational capacity.
Sunday, September 27, 2020
sustainability uni coalition - as the crow flies
The SDG Academy
On July 8, 2020, the Higher Education Sustainability Initiative (HESI) hosted this special event alongside the United Nations ...
transcript extract 80.40 president arizona state uni, with covid and other www community crises, we are where we are, not only because of politics and capitalism, but at the root of it all is us the universities- we are universally inadequate to what lies ahead in terms of the future of our species and our relationship to our beautiful planet which we are all dependent on -let me outline 5 inadequacies
1 we are inadequate in terms of our self-awareness- institutions of higher edu of the net outcome of our design – why do we have business schools that are teaching economic models that are working against our own in sustainability, why do we have a lack of communication between chemists and biologists and economists and engineers and philosophers and historians and everyone else -82:33
inadequate. We are wholly, universally inadequate to
82:38 what lies ahead in terms of the future of our species and our relationship with 82:42
this beautiful planet that we're all dependent on it. Let me outline five
82:47 arguments for that. First, I think that we're inadequate in terms of our
82:52 self-awareness, as an institution of higher education or as institutions of 82:56 higher education, of the net outcome of our design. Why do we have business 83:00 schools teaching economic models that are in fact working against our own 83:06 sustainability? Why do we have a lack of communication between chemists 83:13and biologists and economists and engineers and philosophers and 83:18 historians and everyone else who sit inside university environments arguing 83:24 with each other in ways that are not just about intellectual development but 83:28 are in some ways inane? And so we have never thought ourselves, 83:35 we've never been adequately focused on our own self-awareness to understand 83:41
that in fact our highly disciplinary design, as Jeff Sachs indicated, our
83:46 highly structured way of doing things, our way in which theories evolve, our 83:50 ways in which faculty are recognized, the ways in which knowledge is advanced, the 83:55 net outcome of all of that is exactly where we are in terms of a non- sustainable trajectory,83:59 the non-sustainable trajectory that we're on is 84:03 a product of us. Point number one. Point number two: that same university 84:10 enterprise, that same higher education enterprise, is inadequate in terms 84:15 of its production of systems-level tools. We're an observer. We're obsessed with 84:22
reductionism. We're obsessed with the belief that somehow if we can only
84:26 understand everything down to the atomic scale, if we could only understand 84:31 everything at the genetic and sub-genetic mechanism, that somehow we would 84:37 be able to find the solution to all things. And so the answer is, no,84:41 reductionism is not the method by which we will gain an understanding of the 84:46 interconnectedness of the systems of the planet and the role of humans. It's only 84:50 through our ability to emerge systems-level thinking of equal 84:55 intellectual stature and of equal intellectual value. Third, our 85:01 universities and our higher education systems in the United States and in 85:05 other parts of the world are completely inadequate in terms of their 85:08 intellectual diversification, their cultural diversification, their socioeconomic diversification,85:13 their lack of recognition of indigenous cultures and
85:18 indigenous knowledge, the dismissal of entire cultural paradigms, all around 85:26 this notion of somehow there being one path and one trajectory and one route 85:31 forward. Well, there isn't. And this lack of diversification, lack of women in 85:37 science, technology, engineering, and math, lack of cultural diversification at 85:43 universities which actually is accelerating not decelerating. That 85:47 lack of diversification is accelerating if you look around the world, is in fact 85:52 limiting our overall intellectual contribution. We have a narrower and 85:57
narrower intellectual contribution ,not a broader and broader intellectual
86:01 contribution. So that's the third factor that I think is a key part of the design 86:06 limits. I think forth, and I would probably rank 86:10 this actually first, universities really don't care as institutions about much of
86:14 anything. They care about bringing in faculty. They care about hiring faculty.86:19They care about having students. They care about their budgets. They care about 86:23 arguing with the government to get more money. But they don't really care 86:26 about sustainable outcomes as an institution. They do not take activist 86:32 positions, intellectual activist positions, as Jeff has built his career 86:36 around, and some of the rest of us have been fighting for decades. We just 86:40 sit back and say, "Well, we did what we could do. We educated the people we could 86:43 educate. We put out the theories that we could put out, and
86:46 we're really sorry that the politicians are too stupid or or too 86:51
lazy or businesses are too greedy or too selfish." And so this notion of not taking 86:57 some sense of responsibility, we don't realize that it is in fact our own lack 87:03 of transdisciplinary capability, our own lack of adequate, our own lack of 87:09 diversification. It's our own lack of systems-level thinking, it's our own 87:13 obsession with reductionism that actually has brought us to this point. So 87:18 when we look out and we're concerned about rapidly rising CO2 levels or we're 87:21 concerned about the overwhelming human consumption, and a manifestly negative
87:28 overwhelming consumption of fresh water, or the elimination of the entire fishing 87:33 stock or conservation disruptions on a global 87:37
scale of geological time, we don't realize that that we're responsible for
87:43 that. If you take response—if you know you've contributed to something and it's not87:47going well, if you're a responsible person or a responsible institution, you 87:51 change what you're doing. We don't have much change in what we're doing.87:54 Fifth on my list is, universities are archaic, at least in the European model, 88:01 archaic, slow, non-adaptable, non-technologically sophisticated 88:05 institutions. We're not moving at the speed of climate change. We're not moving
88:11at the speed of complexity, of complexification. We're too slow. We have 88:17no sense of time. We might argue about something for 15 years and in the same 88:22 15 years the Ross Ice Shelf cracked off of Antarctica and led to some 88:27 massive change in the in the ocean circulation cycle and thus impacting 88:34 climate etcetera, etcetera. So the five points here: inadequate self-awareness,88:38 inadequate emergence of systems-level thinking, wholly inadequate 88:42 diversification of the university itself, no sense of moral duty or moral 88:46responsibility as institutions, and inadequate speed and adaptability. If we 88:51 don't change those things, there's not going to be any climate adaptation or 88:55 climate change. There's not going to be movement back towards a sustainable 88:59
trajectory because we're not producing the people, the ideas, the tools, the
89:04 mechanisms, the devices, the theories, the assumptions—the young students who 89:08 are just presenting, they get this. They understand that they enter a university 89:12 which is in fact an archaic institution,incapable of having self-awareness 89:17 relative to where we're headed. So what are we doing at my institution arizona state, we've 89:22 done everything and then some, and still it's a slow slog. We've built the Global 89:28
Futures Laboratory, the Global Institute of Sustainability. We're
89:31 dramatically lowering our carbon footprint. We have thousands and
89:34 thousands of students. We change the design of engineering. We changed parts 89:38 of the design of our business schools. We built a new school on the Future of 89:41 Innovation and Society, a new School of Sustainability, and we're still moving 89:47 too slow. And so I think the point I'd like to make to 89:50 the audience here is, let's listen to these students. They have a sense, they 89:54 have an awareness, and they are able to see immediately upon entry into our
89:59 bureaucratic institutions that we're inadequate to the assignment and we 90:06 ought to take that as a serious, serious criticism. Now let me tell you 90:09
what's happening right now. So right now, and COVID sort of expresses this, we are 90:14 largely as colleges and universities place-based institutions, driven where we 90:21think that excellence is a function of who we exclude, and this is true all over 90:24 the world, where our structure, our technology, our flexibility, our 90:29
adaptability are completely inadequate. So my message to ministers, to UN leaders,90:35 to SDSN leaders, to higher education leaders, to students, to faculty, is that 90:40 let's shake it up. It is time to shake the foundation of the universities and 90:45 have them raise their hand and say, "Yes. We want to be responsible for the 90:50 climate outcome of our planet, for our species outcome, for the 90:56 sustainability of our species." And to do that we're going to have to change 91:00 everything down to the root. So I think that's about 12 minutes and I'll 91:05 stop there.91:13
Ok. Thank you, President Crow. I like the way you framed it because this
Dr. Michael M. Crow is an educator, knowledge enterprise architect, science and technology policy scholar and higher education leader. He became the sixteenth president of Arizona State University in July 2002 and has spearheaded ASU’s rapid and groundbreaking transformative evolution into one of the world’s best public metropolitan research universities. As a model “New American University,” ASU simultaneously demonstrates comprehensive excellence, inclusivity representative of the ethnic and socioeconomic diversity of the United States, and consequential societal impact.
Lauded as the ”#1 most innovative” school in the nation by U.S. News & World Report (2016-2020), ASU is a student-centric, technology-enabled university focused on complex global challenges related to sustainability, economic competitiveness, social embeddedness, entrepreneurship and global engagement. Under Dr, Crow’s leadership, ASU has established twenty-five new transdisciplinary schools, including the School of Earth and Space Exploration, the School for the Future of Innovation in Society and the School of Human Evolution and Social Change, and launched trailblazing multidisciplinary initiatives including the Biodesign Institute, the Julie Ann Wrigley Global Institute of Sustainability, and important initiatives in the humanities and social sciences.