Students at the ZHAW should graduate with more than disciplinary expertise alone. As a university of applied sciences, the ZHAW aims to equip its students with the skills they need to contribute to the sustainable development of our economy and society in their future professions. But how can curricula be developed further without having to be completely rewritten?
The process began in 2024 with an initial written assessment of all Bachelor’s and Master’s degree programmes based on publicly available sources such as module descriptions and study plans. The programme directors subsequently provided their own assessments of the situation. In 2025, four focus groups across the university’s three main sites, followed by a concluding workshop, helped develop a more detailed picture.
An honest assessment as a starting point
The findings present a differentiated picture: around a third of the degree programmes reviewed demonstrate a clearly visible integration of sustainability skills: for example through dedicated compulsory modules, interdisciplinary teaching forms or a curriculum explicitly oriented towards sustainability. Examples can be found in degree programmes in disciplines such as architecture, social work, environmental engineering, international management, and occupational therapy.
In other programmes, while sustainability is certainly present in the content, it is less explicit or not consistently visible in the compulsory curriculum. And around half of the degree programmes show only limited visibility of the sustainability skills they teach in their public-facing descriptions.
Ilja Kirianoff
Sustainability in Teaching and Research Coordinator, ZHAW sustainable, President’s Office
“The education for sustainable development (ESD) review measures whether sustainability is visibly embedded within programmes, not how thoroughly it is taught. In many cases, courses incorporate more sustainability than is apparent from the outside. More important than the overview itself was the dialogue it created: in focus groups and the workshop, the ZHAW teaching staff identified what was missing. The ESD Fund addresses one of these needs: time to develop new teaching forms.”
Visibility is not the same as impact
This distinction is one of the key findings of the review: the assessment chiefly focussed on communicative visibility – in other words, whether sustainability is explicitly mentioned and highlighted in module descriptions or the study plan. Given the diversity of disciplines and teaching approaches across the ZHAW, no systematic survey was undertaken to assess how deeply, effectively, or competency-oriented sustainability is actually taught.
This means that the review does not provide a definitive answer as to where the ZHAW stands in terms of “strengths” and “weaknesses.” It does, however, provide a basis for informed reflection.
Targeted support: time to further develop teaching forms
The focus groups and workshop identified a number of concrete needs. These include strengthening the capabilities of lecturers in the area of sustainability, establishing a shared vision that transcends School boundaries and providing accessible funding opportunities. When it comes to funding, participants saw the biggest hurdle as being the time available to design or further refine teaching formats in the first place. The Education for Sustainable Development (ESD) Fund was set up to address this. It provides seed funding to support the development of educational forms: for example the design of new interdisciplinary modules involving at least two Schools.
Francesco Bortoluzzi
Head of Sustainability Programmes, ZHAW sustainable, President's Office
“Sustainability cannot simply be prescribed from the top down through the curriculum; it must grow within disciplinary cultures. That is why partner universities are also represented on the committee: we are all facing the same challenge and will make progress if we tackle it together rather than each institution working in isolation.”
Advancing ESD together
Applications to the ESD Fund are assessed by a panel deliberately composed of members from both within and beyond the ZHAW: in addition to ZHAW sustainable and the Academic Affairs Office, experts from the University of Applied Sciences and Arts Western Switzerland (HES-SO), the Zurich University of Teacher Education (PHZH) and Bern University of Applied Sciences (BFH) also evaluate the proposals. Integrating sustainability into curricula is not a challenge unique to the ZHAW: many universities are working towards the same goal and experimenting with similar approaches. An outside perspective can more readily identify what works and helps to avoid overly favourable assessments of one’s own projects. The first call for proposals will be launched in 2026.
