As a university, we are committed to implementing and promoting the visibility of sustainability as an interdisciplinary issue cutting across all areas of study. In addition to providing students with specialist knowledge and skills, we offer multidisciplinary content oriented towards sustainability. We equip students with the tools needed to analyze and evaluate environmental, social and economic issues, as well as the skills necessary to address these issues in the context of sustainability.

We learn how to weigh the tradeoff between environmental, social and economic interests of sustainability in a fair-minded way while tackling potential incompatibilities between its various aspects. We hone our conflict management skills and critical facilities to become good ambassadors of sustainability. The close link between teaching and research is constitutive of the cross-cutting sustainability theme.

We work to create an academic environment promoting research into sustainability and in the process qualify a new generation of graduates in this interdisciplinary field of study. Our research findings are deployed to create solutions for the sustainable development of a future-ready world. Frankfurt UAS explicitly supports research projects advancing sustainability in all its dimensions.

In our efforts to expand and enhance knowledge in the spirit of sustainability, we make it a point to share our research findings wherever possible while ensuring their visibility in the public domain.

We see our university as a rich source of sustainability and offer the transfer of our knowledge to municipalities, businesses, government agencies and other social institutions. We help them in their transformation towards greater sustainability by providing support for technical, social and institutional innovations. For transfer services to promote greater sustainability, as a university we offer pertinent cooperation and communication formats.

We regularly conduct Continuing Education programs in sustainability for our alumni and university staff members and for the public at large.

At Frankfurt UAS, our transformation process towards becoming a sustainable university is something we take to heart and invite the public at large and the urban community to directly experience sustainability on our campus.

The well-being of everyone on campus is a key priority for us. We ensure that study and working conditions are conducive to good health – for example, by offering a wide range of varsity sports, as well as facilitating flexible work and study conditions.

Our goal is to achieve fully carbon-neutral university operations by 2030 at the latest.

At Frankfurt UAS we see ourselves as a living laboratory and a model project not only for building, campus and greenspace planning that is future-ready but also for sustainable forms of mobility. Construction projects are being planned, bid and implemented with the goal of carbon neutrality in mind. We are mapping out resource and energy consumption to adapt our behavior and infrastructure as needed.

Sustainable university operations should entail more than simply achieving carbon neutrality. Of equal importance is incorporating a holistic approach to harnessing all resources and processes, including time invested and the personal commitment of each and every individual. We foster the responsible utilization of all available resources in the spirit of sustainability. That is why we are undertaking a review of our administrative and operational procedures, making full use of digitization options.

With regard to procurement and commissioning, our decisions are made particularly with a view to sustainability, thereby ensuring that sustainability is not compromised for financial feasibility reasons. As a matter of principle, Frankfurt UAS enters into cooperative arrangements solely with businesses and organizations that are already committed to implementing sustainability – subject to verification wherever possible. We are actively working towards Fairtrade University certification.

We are in the process of setting up a “Sustainability Office”. It is designed to ensure that all activities relating to study, teaching, research, Continuing Education and knowledge transfer are aligned and coordinated from a sustainability perspective. This also applies to our university operations as a whole. Each faculty and department at Frankfurt UAS must delegate a representative to serve as member of the Sustainability Office. They meet at least twice a semester for the joint development and implementation into performance measures of initiatives emerging from the entire university community. For purposes of facilitating the corresponding policy and behavioral readjustments, the Sustainability Office must report on current projects and carbon footprint reduction, including resource and energy consumption, on a relevant platform. The Office must submit an annual Sustainability Report, to be accompanied by a status quo survey and monitoring. The monitoring system is based on indicators and milestones identified within the scope of planned measures.

We provide the Sustainability Office with the requisite resources.

We are in the process of establishing a Sustainability Council to convene at least once a year and provide meaningful input into our transformation process. The Sustainability Council consists of

• four administration representatives (one of whom is a member of the University Directorate)
• four faculty representatives
• four students and
• three external representatives from business and society

and shall elect a chairperson from among its members.

In implementing and further developing our sustainability goals, we are wholly committed to fostering a participatory culture in which students, faculty, researchers and staff members have the opportunity to play a viable role. To this end, the sustainability strategy is updated biannually.