A university curriculum holistic approach towards education and skills for future engineers in a sustainable primary raw material extraction sector

Description

The European Commission ( ) and as well as EU Member State national mineral policy strategies define edcuation and skills as fundamental for raw materials security of supply in a sustainable manner from European sources. In that sense, the EU-funded project COBALT 1) identifies and maps existing educational offers and skill shortages, 2) develops strategies for tackling them (short courses and university curriculum), and 3) runs pilot test and evaluation procedures of these strategies.
More specifically, the COBALT project provides support for the univerity education system by including sustainable development principles into the raw materials extractive industry sector education. In doing so, we developed a university curriculum blueprint in order to equip future engineers with the necessary level of skills to address primary raw material extraction from a holistic perspective: This practically includes, for example, characteristics such as risk and environmental impact assessments of sensitive environments and the need for special societal and cultural considerations during the setup of mining projects. More specifically, such an educational programme goes beyond issues of detailed technical expertise, but also encompasses an understanding of small community, social responsibility and sustainability issues.
Consequently, future university education, based on a holistic and sustainable development approach towards extraction and processing of non-renewable resources, has the potential to extend the capacities and skills of engineers to enable a transition towards a sustainably operating extractive sector.

Period	1 Dec 2014
Event title	17 th European Forum on Eco-innovation
Event type	Unknown