News & Events

The new BRIGTHS questionnaire is out!

It is intended to map and identify the state of implementation, diffusion, and utilization of sustainability strategies and measures in the European Universities. 

Based on the questionnaire results and further research, we will create a handbook on the state of the art of sustainability implementation at universities, as well as a collection of best practices. It will be a useful tool to help running Sustainability offices in a better way, or to help other universities in setting up one!

Target: European Universities, whether they are provided with a sustainability office/ sustainability initiatives, or not, or whether they are approaching to the topic!

Our questionnaire focuses on initiatives at the university level, in order to narrow down the number of initiatives and have comparable results.

For any inquiry, please write an email to: brights@unipv.it

Estimated time for the completion of the questionnaire: 20 minutes. 

🌱 The international workshop “Sustainability & Innovative Teaching Methodologies” has just come to an end 🌱

Thanks to Brights, we had the chance to create a stimulating environment where to gather students and teachers, from the partner universities and more. 

They could to work together, revising the teaching methodologies in place, highlighting their lacks and strengths, and proposing improvements based on their practical experience. Why? In order to define new, bottom-up and built-together approaches, specifically dedicated to those courses related to sustainability. 

Soon, a report on the main findings will be published…stay tuned!

Full gallery here

The first Brights  LTTA (learning-teaching activity) is ready to host its guests: students and teachers are going to works together in the sessions of the International Workshop on Innovative Teaching Methodologies. 

 The workshop will allow the project partners to discuss and brainstorm on how to improve the learning experience when it comes to sustainability- related courses.

With the workshop directly  addressing the UN SDGs, the event has been recognized in the European Sustainable Development Week agenda. 

The European Sustainable Development Week (ESDW) is an initiative to facilitate the organization of activities that promote sustainable development and make these efforts visible on a common platform.  

Find the BRIGHTS workshop here.

Brights  is organizing its first LTTA (learning-teaching activity): the International Workshop on Innovative Didactics. 

Are you interested? Do you work or study in one of the BRIGHTS' project partenr universities? Have a look at the Agenda and requirements, and apply here!

In the frame of BRIGHTS' Project Result n°2, the consortium is mapping the use and distribution of Innovative Didactic Methodologies in the European Universities. 

The results will be the basis of further discussion in the project Workshop on Innovative Didactics (September 2023, Pavia, Italy). 

Are you a researcher or professor from a EU HEI? Join the research! Find out more and fill in the questionnaire!

Brights - Bringing HEIs Towards Suistainability was presented during the "Healthy Campus" Poster Session at the University of Jena, Germany.

The event framing the poster session was the 6th EC2U Alliance Forum; the session represented a moment when to discuss how a "sustainable campus" is a fundamental track to reach as well the goal of a "healthy campus".

The Poster Session has been a profound moment of discussion and exchange of experiences, best practices, and a great opportunity to introduce BRIGHTS to international colleagues.

In the picture: Martina Altea Bellinzona, BRIGHTS Project Manager, presenting the activities to a colleague from the University of Jena. 

More pictures from the event, in the gallery. 

Brights - Bringing HEIs Towards Suistainability is going to Florence!

The Italian Erasmus+ National Agency INDIRE is organizing, in the broader framework of the Festival of Europe, a monitoring seminar of the Cooperation Partnerships (KA220 HED) projects.

The event, scheduled for 5 May 2023, will take place in Florence at the stand in Piazza della Repubblica from 10.30 to 13.00.

BRIGHTS has been selected as the one project to be presented in the sustainability subject field, among those tackling the green priority. 

Together with other coordinators of KA220 HED projects, Martina Altea Bellinzona and Chiara Danio (UNIPV) will be joining the event presenting the project. This will be a great occasion to meet, discuss, and get confrontation on the challenges of project management and implementation, as well as to find synergies with other actions in place. 

Full program of the event, here. 

More pictures from the event, in the gallery.

The University of Pavia, represented by Marco Oliva, from the International Relations office, is joining the Staff Mobility Week at the University of Bergen, held specifically on the topic "Towards a climate neutral university - working together with our students".

The rationale behind the Staff Week, is that the university’s greatest contribution to the green transition is to develop knowledge that benefits society through education, research and innovation. But the green transition also starts with us: it is of outmost importance to reduce our own climate footprint. How do we accomplish this, and how can we engage our employees and students to contribute?The event will present efforts and ideas, gathering inputs from stakeholders involved on this matter.

What a better occasion to introduce BRIGHTS to a poll of interested European Universities, willing to get engaged on the sustinability challenge? 

The Staff Week will be running from May 8th to 12th 2023: stay tuned to get to know more!

The external evaluator will be in charge of the quality review of the project’s outcomes, in terms of: achievement of objectives and results, impact, coherence, involvement of external stakeholders. S/he will analyse data about the project in order to identify strengths and weaknesses especially in relation to the quantifiable impact of the project activities in the involved universities. Periodical reports will be released to check project progress and make recommendations.

The External Quality Expert will be responsible for:
a) the finalisation and official definition of quality indicators and of monitoring procedures;
b) the elaboration of evaluation reports.

The aim of the external evaluation is to ensure that monitoring of the project is performed adequately and accurately. It identifies procedures, criteria and resources for monitoring the project. It also deals with the evaluation of the progress of the project, risk and issue management and with the evaluation of the results in comparison with the needs of the target group(s) and sector(s).

The external evaluator will receive a 5.000,00 euros reward for the entire activity.

Interested? Here you can find the call, have a look and send us your CV, with previous experiences, at brights@unipv.it

On May 17th, at the University of Pavia, the BRIGHTS Project updates and news will be presented to the academic, and non-academic, community in the frame of the ASVIS (Italian Association for sustainable Development) Sustainability Festival.

The festival is running yearly at national level, providing wide visibility to the initiatives included in its program. In 2023, UNIPV is organizing an open session, dedicated to let all the community explore and get acquainted with the news in what the universities is doing to tackle the climate and sustainability challenges.

BRIGHTS is going to have a specific dedicated session, where the project goals will be described, and the collaboration opportunities (for the different actors of the academic targets) will be showcased. Furthermore, it will be an extremely interesting and useful chance to establish synergies with other sustainability initiatives running at the university and with other projects implemented in the frame of the UN SDGs.

 All the events in the frame of the ASVIS festival are open and free: come meet us!

Stay tuned for updates, follow our socials!

On March 3rd, the University of Pavia organized, in the frame of the EC2U Alliance, a Think Thank on the topic of “Social Innovation in times of Crisis”. The roundtable and discussion was specifically intended to investigate the local stakeholders’ perception on the role of social innovation in tackling today’s challenges: Social Crisis, Health Crisis, and Environmental Crisis. 

In this specific last context, Martina Altea Bellinzona (Project Coordinator), joined the roundtable and the discussion, bringing about the “university’s perspective”, how innovation can be intended even in a transversal didactic sense, and how helpful this can be to bring about a structural change from scratch.

It was the chance to have the BRIGHTS project presented to other stakeholder directly involved in the field of sustainability at local level. Start-ups (Voltaplant, Rehouseit, PlanEat) associations (Activators Pavia), the local Municipality representatives), and researchers from the Academia, engaged in a fruitful discussion on possible synergies and future collaborations, to boost the ideals of sustainability inside and outside the university walls.

Have a look at the gallery!

The Project consortium is going to have its third Transnational Project Meeting in Cyprus, from June 19th to 21st 2023.

The meeting will gather representatives from each project partner in order to discuss and brainstorm of the state of the art of the project activities and implementation, specifically:

1)     PR1: development and alignment in the creation of the SDGs’ Courses Modules

2)     PR2: revision of the report analysing the use and diffusion of innovative didactic modalities; joint organization of the related workshop, to be held in Pavia in September 2023.

3)     PR3: joint revision of the state of implementation and responses’ collection of the questionnaires previously distributed to collect the best practices in the management of sustainability in the European universities.

The project partners already had the chance to meet twice: at the Kick of Meeting first (Pavia, May 2022), and at the Project Meeting in Cologne (December 2022).

Regular meetings are fundamental to make sure the project implementation runs smoothly and partners are aligned on the status of the activities.

Subscribe to our newsletter here, and follow our socials to remain updated on the outputs of the meeting!

In the frame of the project Learning-Teaching activities, the project consortium is organizing the first workshop: it will be focused on the project result N°2, i.e. on defining innovative didactic modalities for the delivery of sustainability contents and teachings.

The purpose will be that of gathering students and professors, to let them brainstorm and compare ideas and necessities. The workshop will answer questions as: how to set up more student-cantered classes? How can professors deal with the new attitudes of students towards the learning experience, as to maximise it and update their teaching skills?

The workshop will be held in Pavia, Italy, from September 18th to 22nd: 10 students and 2 professors per each partner university will have the chance to participate. The program, still to be defined, will foresee training moments where all the participants will get acquainted with the new trends in innovative didactics, by experts in the field. Practical sessions will be organized in order to let the groups work with the support of ad-hoc moderators.

The basis on which the workshop will develop is an ongoing mapping of the distribution and use of innovative didactics in the partner universities (analized and investigated via questionanires ditrbuited to the partenrs’ staff). The questionnaires’ reponses and their analysis will be the input on which developing the new proposals.

The expected result is the definition of students’ needs and didactic modalities that can respond to those necessities.

Interested to join as teaching staff or student? Write us (brights@unipv.it) to express your willingness to join, or stay tuned to remain updated via our newsletter and socials, where you will get all the necessary information about the initiative!

From March 7 th to 10 th , a delegation from the University of Pavia, representing the Brights Project, has been hosted at the University of Coimbra, in the frame of an EC2U Alliance coordination meeting. Specifically, Martina Altea Bellinzona (BRIGHTS Project Coordinator), and Andrea Campotaro (from the Office for Sustainable Actions at UNIPV – fully involved in the project) were invited to meet the representatives of the Alliance.

Such participation was fundamental to present the BRIGHTS Projects (objectives, partners, methodology) to the EC2U members, which is composed of: University of Pavia, University of Coimbra (Portugal), University of Poitiers (France - coordinator), University of Turku (Finland), University of Jena (Germany), University of Salamanca (Spain), University of Iasi (Romania).

The meeting was intended to introduce BRIGHTS to the Alliance, identifying the possible synergies and topics of mutual interest, the cooperation opportunities to maximise the impact of the project and the dissemination of its results.

Furthermore, it was an opportunity to exchange best practices in the sustainability management of the campuses, of confrontation of the way to run the Universities’ participation in international rankings on sustainability (with specific focus on THE Impact Ranking), etc.

All these contents are at the core of the BRIGHTS Project Result N°3, which provides for the creation of a Handbook containing all the insights and best practices in the management of Sustainability Offices, tips for greening the international activities of the universities, advices on how to define a Sustainability Strategy, including the participation in the rankings and sustainability-related international networks.

The meeting in Coimbra laid the basis for future fruitful collaborations, being the Alliance interested in supporting the development and dissemination of the BRIGHTS sustainability objectives: boosting the Universities role as change makers, promoting the university campus as a model for sustainability, fostering innovation in the various aspects of the topic.

Stay tuned for further updates on this!

The EC2U Alliance  is an innovative project aimed at creating a pan-European Campus among the partner Universities and their municipalities, under the banner of the Sustainable Development Goals of the United Nations.

The Alliance orientation towards Sustainability, as well as the strict synergy between Academia, municipality, civil society and the local stakeholders, made EC2U the perfect stage where to present the BRIGHTS Projects to the partner universities.

For this reason, Martina Altea Bellinzona (UNIPV) presented the project during the 5th EC2U Forum, which took place in Iasi, Romania, from 11th to 13th October  2022. 

"Connecting communities and re-imagining mobility"  has been the main theme of the EC2U Forum. The event has gathered students, professors, citizens and stakeholders from within and beyond the EC2U Alliance, in a diverse range of open activities to discuss on how to boost green mobility and build stronger ties between communities. 

BRIGHTS Project presentation was included in the Citizen Science session, with particular reference to the PR3, and the link  it aims at boosting between the Acedemia and the stakeholders.

Have a look at the gallery!

The EC2U Alliance  is an innovative project aimed at creating a pan-European Campus among the partner Universities and their municipalities, under the banner of the Sustainable Development Goals of the United Nations.

The Alliance orientation towards Sustainability, as well as the strict synergy between Academia, municipality, civil society and the local stakeholders, made EC2U the perfect stage where to present the BRIGHTS Projects to the partner universities.

For this reason, Martina Altea Bellinzona (UNIPV) presented the project during the 5th EC2U Forum, which took place in Iasi, Romania, from 11th to 13th October  2022. 

"Connecting communities and re-imagining mobility"  has been the main theme of the EC2U Forum. The event has gathered students, professors, citizens and stakeholders from within and beyond the EC2U Alliance, in a diverse range of open activities to discuss on how to boost green mobility and build stronger ties between communities. 

BRIGHTS Project presentation was included in the Citizen Science session, with particular reference to the PR3, and the link  it aims at boosting between the Acedemia and the stakeholders.

Have a look at the gallery!

On September 28th, during the event "Erasmus+ for all", in the frame of the "Sharper Night" Week, the BRIGHTS project has been presented to the academic community of the University of Pavia. 

The event counted 150 participants, among students, researches, and teachers. It was an exellent opportunity to showcase the project goals to the different academic components, which represent, at all levels, an integral part of the BRIGHTS activities. It allowed for the public to get to know the project and familiarize with its contents, starting to collect expressions of interest, for the involvement in future collaborative activites (such as the attendance of the training courses, the workshop activities, etc.). 

On May 19th-20th, the Project kick-off meeting has taken place in the premises of the University of Pavia (project coordinator). 

The meeting allowed the consortium to meet up for the very first time, discussing in depth each Project Result, the timeline to achieve the project goals, as well as specific management aspects, necessary to ensure the proper project implementation and success. 

Representatives from all the parters joined the meeting, for a full two-day intensive program.