IDEA League
Being a Role Model and Learning From One Another
The members of the IDEA League are the Technical University of Delft, the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology Zurich, Chalmers University of Technology, Politecnico di Milano, and RWTH Aachen University. Since 2020, a working group has been tackling the issue of sustainability on university campuses. This expert working group aims to strengthen collaboration and the sharing of best practices. As part of their efforts, the working group also published a report titled “Sustainability and Climate Action on Campuses” in 2022. This report lists the different approaches the member universities took, the challenges they faced, where they succeeded, and what they learned – also in part to help guide other universities, cities, and institutions.
Joint Events
This kind of cross-border, bottom-up collaboration provides an ideal environment for students, researchers, and staff from the partnering universities to share their collective wealth of knowledge, experience, and resources. It also offers wonderful opportunities for interactive problem-solving and networking within the framework of summer schools and conferences.
In 2021 and 2022, the Institute for Urban Design and European Urbanism at RWTH hosted summer schools under the umbrella of the IDEA League. See the Teaching and Learning section for exciting insights into these summer schools.
The Sustainable Campus Conference was held in Aachen for the first time alongside the 2022 Summer School. The IDEA League universities are all working on plans for action toward more sustainability for their specific campuses and their research and teaching activities. The purpose of this conference was to present and share these plans, including with other interested European universities.