At Chalmers, we have always had the idea
that sustainability concerns us all. If we are going to build a society
that can provide 10 billion people with well-being within a few decades,
it is not feasible to lock in sustainable development to such
individual parts of the university as an educational programme or
Department.
Instead, our stance has been to let our vision, Chalmers for a sustainable future,
permeate all our activities; from undergraduate education and doctoral
programmes, research, innovation and collaboration, to campus
development and internal environment. For almost thirty years, all our
students have taken a class in environment and sustainable development
and had the opportunity to complete their studies with a sustainability
profile. And by means of our eight Areas of Advance, all with
sustainable development as a driving force, we are gathering skills and
power, in collaboration with other actors in society, to tackle the
large and complex societal challenges we are facing.
As a university, we have two especially important roles. First,
there are few institutions in society with time perspectives as long as
universities. There we have a responsibility, for example, in basic
research, to train our curiosity on the unknown, possibly to find
something ground-breaking that can be of crucial importance. But our
most important role as a university is to build up the ability of our
students, so we can gain the best position from which to handle
transition over the next fifty years, when these students will be
working.
The transition we are facing can be compared to the transition that
took place when agricultural society developed into an industrial
society. Now, industrial society needs to evolve into something much
more efficient and accommodate human needs while generating
significantly less environmental impact. This is where the
responsibility of our university and our individual engineers lies.
Partly in seeing how technology can be an enabler, but also in
reflecting over societal consequences and ethical issues related to
technological development in a global world.
Chalmers is a pioneer in regards to how a university can take on,
work with and take responsibility for sustainable development. To
maintain a high level of ambition and to be a pioneer, both courage and
power are required. We all need to keep the following question alive and
dynamic: what conditions and abilities do I need to develop in order to
better contribute to a sustainable future?