St. Pölten UAS Sustainable Development Awards
A Day Dedicated to Sustainable Development
The St. Pölten UAS recently gave away its Sustainable Development Awards to student projects dealing with sustainable development topics for the first time. The students presented their works online at the “Sustainability Day”.
The Winners
These are the winning projects by categories:
- Category SDGs and/or Sustainability: project plan “Redesign Schallabsorber” – a sustainable acoustic absorber made from textile waste
- Category Sustainability and Economics: bachelor thesis “Der ‘ideale´ Sozialmarkt – Perspektiven und Alternativen” (the ideal social market – perspectives and alternatives) within the framework of the Social Work degree programme
- Category Sustainability and Social Affairs: “Angehörigendialog 2.0 – Digitalisierung des Angehörigendialogs“ (nursing relatives dialogue 2.0 – digitalisation of the nursing relatives dialogue)
- Category Sustainability and Mobility in Rural Areas: bachelor thesis on the topic of “Verkehrskonzepte für den ländlichen Raum” (transport concepts for rural areas)
- Category Digitalisation and Sustainability: “AI vs Food Waste – Ressourcenverschwendung datenbasiert stoppen“ (using data to stop the waste of resources)
The winners received a prize of 1,000 EUR each. This was made possible with the support of the Society for the Promotion of the St. Pölten UAS, which contributed 500 EUR to every prize, as well as the Lower Austrian Chamber of Labour (AK NÖ), NÖGKK, NÖVOG, Sparkasse NÖ West, and kwak Telecom Ltd. – all of them members of the Society – which contributed another 500 EUR to the individual categories. For three of the submissions, the jury had a special bonus in store: a presentation within the framework of a Sustainable Development Lounge at the St. Pölten UAS.
“Sustainable development is of great importance to us here at the St. Pölten UAS. The UAS Board declared this subject its annual theme, and a number of lectures, events and other activities were hosted around this topic. We were impressed with the numerous contributions and great projects submitted by our students”, says Monika Vyslouzil, Chairperson of the UAS Board.
Sustainability Day
The lectures held within the framework of the Sustainability Day were dedicated to sustainability and communication, climate change, Agenda 2030, and social inequality. Workshops addressed ways to implement the UN Sustainable Development Goals in teaching and discussed the topic of cycle paths in St. Pölten.
The speeches on sustainability and communication were held by Roswitha Reisinger from the magazine “Lebensart” and UAS lecturer and business ethicist Michael Litschka. Herbert Formayer, associate professor at the University of Natural Resources and Life Sciences (BOKU) in Vienna and a member of the Austrian university network UniNEtZ which supports the implementation of sustainability goals in the university sector, shared his expertise on sustainability and climate change. Karin Kuranda from SDG Watch Austria, Karin Fischer from Johannes Kepler University (JKU) Linz, and Katharina Kreissl from the University of Salzburg (both universities are UniNEtZ members as well) gave lectures on the topic “Agenda 2030, Interdependenzen und soziale Ungleichheiten in Österreich” (Agenda 2030, interdependencies and social inequalities in Austria).
Workshops at Sustainability Day
The workshop “Sustainability in Teaching” investigated how connections to sustainable development and the Sustainable Development Goals of the United Nations can be established in all study programmes. The workshop “Cycling and Cycle Paths in St. Pölten and its Surroundings“ invited all participants to exchange their views and experiences with this topic. The workshop was initiated by a student and implemented in cooperation with the initiative “Klimahauptstadt 2024” (climate capital 2024) and the bicycle lobby of St. Pölten which launched its climate talks with this workshop.