NEWLEAD consortium meets at the Gdansk University of Technology back-to-back with EUA’s Annual Conference

Wednesday, May 3, 2023. On Friday 21 April, the NEWLEAD consortium held a hybrid meeting at the Gdańsk University of Technology (Poland), back-to-back with the 2023 Annual Conference of the European University Association.

At the meeting, the partners discussed how to approach the final step of the project, the dissemination activities and the communication of the project results. Finally, an update was made on the elaboration of the workbooks focused on different topics related to innovative leadership and change management in the higher education environment and the timetable for their publication.

In this regard, the consortium announced the publication of Workbook 1, led by the URL and the CRUE, and supported by the EUA, which addresses the United Nations 2030 Agenda and describes the way in which the Spanish university system has incorporated it as part of its strategy. On the same time, and as part of the 2030 Agenda, the workbook addresses the way in which Spanish universities have worked at a national level in ensuring inclusive and equitable quality education in HEIs.

The two cases described in this workbook show that the implementation of the Sustainable Development Goals in universities present different challenges that are relevant to the overall mission of the institutions. The workbook describes in more detail some of the challenges that higher education leaders face in this context, such as governance and coordination, institutional culture, awareness and visibility, training and development, and data collection and analysis.

Overcoming these challenges and achieving the Sustainable Development Goals, such as Equity, Diversity and Inclusion goals, transforming universities themselves into sustainable institutions, and building alliances with other actors to achieve greater societal impact represent major institutional transformation processes.