Civic universities aim to provide a learning environment in which students are enabled to become responsible citizens who recognize themselves as members of a larger social fabric and therefore consider social problems to be partly their own.

General Overview

In collaboration with academics, students and external stakeholders, the EUniWell project “Civic Leadership to improve Social Well-Being” aims to co-create a digital platform to share resources and templates for embedding innovative and intercultural civic leadership approaches in enterprise education and providing knowledge exchange opportunities (e.g. internships, cross-university collaborations).

University project partners (University of Birmingham, University of Cologne and Linnaeus University) are running a series of workshops which bring together staff, students and community actors to share best practices on incorporating civic leadership approaches in innovative curriculum development and course design and how these practices can be shared digitally.

Purpose and Significance

The project addresses two questions:

• How can we create learning experiences for our students which tackle the complex interdisciplinary challenges of the 21st century?
• How can universities become a focus and resource for entrepreneurial thinking, value creation and positive change, linking local and global dynamics, bottom-up and top-down approaches?

In partnership with societal stakeholders we are exploring how teaching in the field of sustainability goes beyond teaching about the 17 goals of the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development. By providing innovative teaching and learning experiences and blueprints which can be contextualized for any subject discipline, the project contributes to EUniWell’s integrated system-thinking approach to deliver a meaningful step-change towards the well-being of our institutions, staff, students, and societies. 

Implementation Method and Timeline

To develop a digital platform of shared best practice in civic leadership and enterprise education, the team organizes six workshops across 2021-22: 

• 5 May 2021 – Workshop #1 – Civic leadership & enterprise education introduction
• 26 May 2021 – Workshop #2 – Civic leadership skills 
• 30 June 2021 – Workshop #3 – Digital platform design 
• 24 November 2021 – Workshop #4 – External stakeholders 
• 4 March 2022 – Workshop #5 – Educators 
• 16 March 2022 – Workshop #6 – Students 
• End of May 2022 – Finalisation of test digital platform 
• Mid June 2022 – Presentation of the digital platform at project symposium

Expected Outcomes

The project creates an interactive European network for all three target groups to improve social well-being and build more inclusive, fairer societies by sharing best practices on a digital platform.