Project application

Promoting Sustainable Development through education (FNE)

WHAT
  • A project that promotes sustainable development through education (in a broad sense) at the University of Bern.
  • Projects can be courses or events within regular study programmes, or they can be creative and take other forms (e.g. conferences, workshop series, exhibitions, podcasts, real-world laboratories, etc).
WHO
  • Employees of the University of Bern
  • The funding is specifically aimed at lecturers and mid-level staff (i.e. employees of the University of Bern, enrolled and registered doctoral students, post-doctoral and habilitation students, employees of the central administration, etc.). Bachelor’s and Master’s students are not eligible to apply.
WHEN
  • Project submission deadline is February 28, 2026.

The university is awarding personnel points (PPs) to participating institutions, in the framework of the Promoting SD through education project. This gives project managers time to work on conception, implementation, and evaluation of a course or event relevant to promoting sustainability.

For the purposes of this funding mechanism, an “educational event” can take any format that helps the learner acquire competences that are relevant to sustainability. The focus is on the learning and teaching of all participants. The aim – achieving Education for Sustainable Development (ESD) – goes beyond merely imparting knowledge to students. Instead, it invites all participants to take part in the knowledge process and to open up spaces for reflection and action in the field of SD. This means that the format chosen can be creative – and it should empower employees from a broad range of fields to generate a setting appropriate to the chosen format.

Project application

The documents for the project application are currently being revised and are expected to be available again from the end of October.

Submission deadline

For your project application please use the application form (see Project application). Please submit your project application by email (PDF) to: sustainability.cde@unibe.ch. We will confirm receipt by return email.

The submission deadline for projects starting in the autumn semester 2026 or spring semester 2027 is February 28, 2026.

Decision

The ESD team, in consultation with the Vice-Rectorate Quality and Sustainable Development, will announce the awarding of the projects submitted in August beginning of October 2025. If the number of applications is high, disciplines or fields with less experience of Sustainable Development to date will be given priority. 

Products and publications based on FNE projects

Studer R. 2020. Green Learning für alle.pdf (PDF, 2.8 MB)
Bigler C. 2022. Gender-based violence as a sustainability problem (PDF, 211KB)