Education & Studies
From the lecture hall to the data center: Sustainability as a common thread—Teaching sustainability, shaping the future.
Teaching plays a central role at the University of Potsdam—not only for the acquisition of knowledge, but also for imparting skills relevant to sustainability. The university is continuously working to integrate topics such as environmental and climate protection into as many degree programs and courses as possible, in an interdisciplinary and cross-faculty manner.
Students and faculty are already benefiting from the diverse range of sustainability-related courses:
In the natural sciences, for example, in degree programs such as Geoecology, the Master’s in Ecology, Evolution, and Conservation, or the Master’s in CLEWS (Climate, Earth, Water, Sustainability).
In addition, a growing number of courses address sustainability topics from various perspectives—ranging from natural and environmental sciences to social, cultural, and educational sciences. Examples include the lecture series “Introduction to Climate, Earth, Water, Sustainability,” as well as courses on agroecology, paleoclimate dynamics, climate law, and the economics of climate change. Courses such as Green Computing, Foundational Texts in the Environmental Humanities, and Modeling Political Decisions for Sustainability—Forecasting EU Climate Policy also demonstrate how deeply sustainability is embedded in research and teaching at the University of Potsdam.
The program is complemented by the Studium oecologicum an interdisciplinary course originally initiated by students, which has been supervised by the Chair of Growth, Integration, and Sustainable Development under Prof. Dr. Maik Heinemann and supported by the Green Office since the summer semester of 2025.
The discussion of sustainable education is particularly relevant for future teachers, as they are expected to integrate Education for Sustainable Development (ESD) into their teaching in an interdisciplinary manner. The Orientation Framework for the Global Development Learning Area defines the core competencies of Education for Sustainable Development, which are enshrined in the Berlin-Brandenburg Framework Curriculum under the cross-curricular competency area “Sustainable Development/Learning in Global Contexts.”
The goal is to further network these offerings, for example through a central repository of sustainable courses and a planned interdisciplinary lecture series on the climate crisis—in collaboration with initiatives such as Scientists for Future at the University of Potsdam.
In the area of teaching, the University of Potsdam is guided not only by the recommendations of the German Rectors’ Conference for a culture of sustainability and the Berlin-Brandenburg Sustainability Strategy, but also by the United Nations’ 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs)—in particular Goals 4, 10, 13, 16, and 17:
