Abstract:

The SDGs are a catalyst for reflection for many groups (governments, companies, profit and non-profit organizations and society in general). Obviously, universities cannot remain on the sidelines of the introspection that the SDGs are triggering, they cannot ignore their implementation, nor should they cease to convey their values to today's students, the leaders of the future. By integrating the SDGs into curricula, they can provide students with the knowledge and skills needed to address them [1].

Some Higher Education institutions have already started to implement and include the concept of sustainability within their campuses, governing bodies, curricula and strategies. However, despite the importance of the 17 SDGs and their popularity in the academic, governmental, and professional spheres, to date they have only received limited attention at the university level [2]. There is still a long way to go and university lecturers have an important role to play in transmitting knowledge to students and facilitating reflection on the challenges facing society. Faculty members and other staff must be encouraged and empowered to become critical enablers of advancement in the redesign and innovation of curricular approaches and extracurricular activities [3].

We therefore need to go down to the subject level for the SDGs to reach today's students and make them responsible citizens as the future leaders of organisations, whose decisions need to fully consider the challenges of sustainability.

The purpose of this work is to reflect on and analyse what university teachers can do to improve our students' learning and engagement with the SDGs. Hence, a team of lecturers on the Operations Management (OM) course at the Universitat de Barcelona have created new teaching content and materials (case studies and other training activities) designed to improve their knowledge of the SDGs, both in terms of awareness of what the goals are and new opportunities for their application in their future professional lives as operations managers.

Specifically, this project’s research questions are:
(i) what training actions can we design so that our OM students acquire the necessary competences to implement the SDGs in their future professional lives?
(ii) what impact will these training actions have on the students?

To measure the impact of the designed materials on the students, a survey was developed and subsequently answered by the students both before and after they used the materials.

Although we have observed that there is a lack of wider knowledge of the 2030 Agenda and the SDGs, we believe that our students are concerned about the issues that the goals pursue in terms of an awareness and understanding of the opportunities for application to businesses. Hence, we have observed a positive impact of the proposed didactic activities on our students.

References:
[1] SDSN,“Getting started with the SDGs in universities: A guide for universities, higher education institutions, and the academic sector”, Melbourne: SDSN, 2017.
[2] R. Antolín et al, “Análisis de la importancia de los objetivos de desarrollo sostenible de las NU en el ámbito universitario: diferencias entre la perspectiva personal y empresarial”, Revista Educativa Hekademos, 2020.
[3] M.R. Assumpção et al, “State-of-the-art practices being reported by the PRME champions group: A reference to advance education for sustainable development”, The International Journal of Management Education, vol.18, 2020.

Keywords:

Sustainable Development Goals, SDG, 2030 Agenda, future business leaders, future operations managers.