Consultancy Project Global Sustainability Science

Please note: the information in the course manual is binding.
 

 

Educational Aims
 

1. Learn to apply the theories and methods you learnt during your bachelors in a transdisciplinary environment
2. Learn how to communicate to stakeholders in a clear and compelling manner through various media such as reports, presentations, posters etc.

Competencies
 

1. Learn the transferrable skills of project management and working in a team towards a project goal
2. Learn the transferrable skills of working with a client and how to conduct yourself with integrity and in a professional manner
3. Learn to reflect on competencies you have and those you need to develop in order to contribute to a more sustainable world.

Introduction
The consultancy project is designed to help you apply the knowledge you have learned during your studies in the GSS bachelors in a transdisciplinary setting. You will work as sustainability consultants on an applied problem for a real-world client. But what is a consultant?? A consultant is an expert that organizations hire to provide advice on a topic that the organization doesn’t have inhouse expertise on. You will take on the role of sustainability consultants and in doing so, will learn what the role of a consultant is. It is also the aim of this course that you will make a real contribution to providing advice for your client and in doing so contribute to moving their organization towards their sustainability goals.  

What will you learn?
You will each learn different things during this course depending on the client and challenge you are focusing on. However, the main thing you will learn in this course is to work in a transdisciplinary manner with societal stakeholders (clients). This means combining your multidisciplinary sustainability knowledge with the real-world knowledge of societal stakeholders to hopefully co-create novel and societally relevant insights and advice. Through this process, you will learn in-depth about the specific challenges’ stakeholders and businesses encounter. You will learn what the job of sustainability consultant entails and many of the skills required to become a successful sustainable consultant who contributes to achieving the sustainability targets of businesses and non-profit organizations. You will learn how to work in groups and reflect on what your natural role in a group is and when it is optimal to play this role or take on a less natural role. You will learn how to project plan and delegate. You will learn how to reflect on your own role in contribution to a sustainable world and begin to learn how you can take the perspective of peers and societal stakeholders who may have diverging or clashing views on the sustainability transition.


How will you learn?
The course places a large emphasis on group work and self-guided learning. The central assignment of the course is providing your client with advice on how to reach their sustainability goals. Through developing this advice, you will tackle sustainability challenges in interdisciplinary teams working towards a problem set by your respective clients. You are the consultants and you will take the lead in the process. The teachers will act as instructors. You will work on an overarching question posed by the client. This question will be broken into sub-questions, which you will work on in sub-groups. Thus, you will have to learn how to manage a project at the group and sub-group level.
Assignments such as the impact deliverable will stimulate you to use your creativity to actually bring about change. Whilst the reflective assignment will make you think more deeply about the ways in which you can contribute to a sustainable future.

Why learn these things?
The consultancy sector will employ a large proportion of GSS graduates. However, it is often quite unclear what consultants do. This course will give you a good sense of what the job of a consultant entails. It will allow you develop a perspective on whether consultancy is something for you and what type of consultancy you are attracted to. Even if you don’t go on to work in consultancy, having a knowledge of the sector is very important as you will likely work with sustainability consultants no matter what sector you work in in the future.
But more broadly than that, this course will equip you with the some of the transferrable skills and knowledge required to take practical steps towards contributing to a more just and sustainable world. It will allow you to experience what it means to work together with diverse actors to achieve real sustainability change.
 


Because the Consultancy Project is an intensive course, students are not allowed to participate in more than 1 other course simultaneously.
 
This course is the entry requirement for: