Sustainability in education

We offer an array of resources for teaching and learning about sustainability.

We want to give our graduates basic knowledge about sustainability in addition to their field-specific skills. To that end, we set up a Teach4Sustainability working group within the EPFL Sustainability Unit. This working group has been tasked with expanding and broadening our range of our sustainability classes in the coming years – a request we frequently receive from our students.

All our schools and colleges have a key role to play. The Teach4Sustainability working group will provide various resources to our schools and colleges to help them incorporate sustainability into their classes.

We’re also developing training programs for our staff, and we will expand our sustainability-oriented outreach and continuing education initiatives.

By training members of our entire community on these issues, we hope to give them valuable skills they can apply in their careers.

Sustainability-oriented educational programs

What actions are possible on an individual level?

Strategy objectives

We offer a growing number of sustainability-oriented classes that award European Credit Transfer System (ECTS) credits. We also run extra-curricular activities and other types of initiatives, projects and awards (see below). To learn more about our student sustainability initiatives, visit our Community and Outreach web page.

We’re always looking for motivated student assistants to help us transform our classes and curricula. If you’re interested, please fill out this form.

Teaching sustainability

If our students are to become competent, responsible scientists and engineers, our faculty members must be trained on how to teach basic sustainability topics as well as more specialized classes. Since 2022, we’ve been providing training, personalized coaching and other resources to help faculty members incorporate sustainability into their classes.

Lifelong Learning

What actions are possible on an individual level?

Strategy objectives

Our outreach and continuing education initiatives are intended to promote science and engineering, and to share recent developments in these fields that can be useful to our society and economy. We want to expand this range of programs in order to increase general understanding of sustainability issues, help policymakers make decisions that are evidence-based, update the skills of specialists in engineering and other fields, and raise youth awareness about sustainability through programs at schools and universities.