About the Green Hub
It is the shared vision of Green Hub Twente and the University of Twente that sustainability becomes the norm throughout the University of Twente landscape and culture. Green Hub Twente aims to build a broad sustainability network amongst the student body, the UT, companies, researchers, organizations, and the local community. The team consists of one University staff member, who functions as a coordinator, and students who are employed working on four different portfolios: (1) Research and Education, (2) Operations and Consulting, (3) Marketing, Community and Communication, and (4) Support Team.
Mission
The Green Hub Twente’s mission consists of:
- creating a central point which connects, informs, and supports the UT community to advance its sustainability transformation
- being a platform engaging the UT community to create a bottom-up movement for sustainability, climate and social justice
- playing an active role in shaping, realizing, implementing, and tracking the UT sustainability policy and performance
- acting as a channel for sustainable, social and systems entrepreneurship, empowering them as ambassadors of transformative sustainability in business practices and in wider society.
Core Tasks
With an official mandate from the University, Green Hub Twente carries out its mission encompassing the subjects of education, research, entrepreneurship, communications, and operations. The following core tasks enable The Green Hub Twente to carry out its mission and become the heart of sustainability and systemic change at the UT:
- The Green Hub will initiate and facilitate the collaboration between different sustainability initiatives at UT to ensure greater impacts as well as a diffusion of best practices. This includes initiatives by student or study associations (dream team of Design Lab and others), the research departments of the university and the future E-Lab, the operations (i.e. via the SEE programme) and partners such as Sustain and NovelT.
- Establishing a network of systems entrepreneurs to advance sustainability-oriented entrepreneurship, allowing them to build off each other’s ideas and experiences, and learn how to transform organisations elsewhere.
- To act as a central intelligence point for information regarding sustainability. Green Hub Twente will create an accessible database to collect all research, ideas, and efforts, to enable building-up upon previous results.
- Informing and advising students and staff regarding sustainability to ensure greater success in the development and implementation of sustainability efforts at the UT.
- Green Hub Twente will be involved in the organisation of events with regards to sustainability with the aim of creating awareness and offer networking opportunities. This will include the organisation of conferences, networking opportunities, campus challenges and activities such as the Sustainability Week.
- Encouraging and supporting the integration of sustainability in educational programmes by building a network with educational directors and workiing with the United Nation's Sustainable Development Goals.
- Reflecting on the university’s sustainability efforts by offering constructive feedback, as well as taking an active role in working groups implementing the recommendations.
Organisational Reporting
In the Annual report 2020 and the Annual Plan 2021, the activities of the new Green Hub are shared since its opening in mid-2020, as well as its plans and goals for 2021. The added value of making sustainability a precondition to everything UT does is supported by the content of our activities – particularly in the area of education, as this aligns with the organisational priorities the Executive Board sets out for 2021: Challenge-Based learning, Life-long Learning, and the ECIU. Our adaptations to the COVID-19 pandemic also show how interconnected service departments can use the crisis as an opportunity for digital transformation, as well as organisational transformation and renewal.
With the Annual Report 2021, the Green Hub reports on its first full year of operation and delivers on many projects started in 2020. Continuing its mission, successes and impactful events, as well as ongoing projects that add to the educational quality sustainability operations and quality of the community across the UT are detailed and contextualized. Organizational changes and the ongoing adaptation to the Covid-19 pandemic are made transparent with a special focus on the evaluation of the Green Hub’s role at the UT and the lessons learned since its foundation.