The Aalto Co-Educator Team Continues to Shape a Sustainable Future

The Aalto Co-educator (ACE) team supports teachers to meaningfully integrate solutions for sustainability, entrepreneurship and radical creativity in courses, programmes and competence development. Over the past four years, the team has provided hands-on support for course, curriculum and minor development, pedagogical courses and materials, and workshops for teachers.

Direct networking with Aalto’s staff and faculty has been central to the ACE team’s work. Their collaborative approach has helped with their goal of equipping Aalto graduates to make impactful, sustainability-driven decisions. 

Aalto Co-Educator Highlights 

• Sustainability in Teaching Pedagogical Course: Developed a pedagogical course concept, syllabus, and materials. Sign up for the course here.
• Multidisciplinary Sustainability Minor: Launched a Bachelor’s level multidisciplinary sustainability minor for students across all schools. The minor is running successfully with teachers from all schools and participants from five of the six schools. Read about it here.
• Train-the-Trainer Workshops: Created workshops to equip educators with tools to integrate sustainability into their teaching. 
• New Sustainability-Related ILOs: Introduced sustainability-focused Intended Learning Outcomes at degree levels, influencing curricula and courses. 
• Curriculum Analysis Tool: Developed a focused tool to map sustainability competencies in programs.
• Collaboration with Nordic and Baltic Universities: As a member of the NORDTEK organisation, we've led a working group and compiled a document of best practices in the field amongst Nordic and Baltic institutions. 
• Events and workshops: Implemented engaging sessions for teachers to share how they've successfully implemented sustainability into their courses, competence development and programmes, including larger-scale workshops for teachers and the Sustainability Days conference. 
• Teacher handbooks and other publications: Published sustainability and teamwork handbooks to guide educators. The updated handbook will be available soon. The team also shared important findings at the 2023 SEFI conference.

The Future of the Aalto Co-Educator Team

As the ACE team transitions into its next phase, it will continue to serve the Aalto community in tight collaboration with the Cross-Cutting Approaches (CCA) team, led by Elina Kähkönen. 

The ACE team — Katri-Liisa Pulkkinen (Team Lead and Sustainability Specialist), Tuomo Eloranta (Co-Lead and Multidisciplinarity Specialist), Maria Svanström (Sustainability Specialist), and Johannes Kaira (Radical Creativity and Entrepreneurial Mindset Specialist) — remains committed to supporting staff and faculty in advancing sustainability and competency development across courses and programs.

Whether you need help integrating the cross-cutting themes into your course, mapping your programme, or developing your competencies, the ACE team is here to help. Contact us at co-educators@aalto.fi or meet us here to learn more about our services.