Three questions for “People With An Agenda”

What innovations in Education are you developing, and what motivates you to do so?

Christian Holler: My innovation professorship focuses on education in the field of sustainability – both within the university and beyond. We aim to give students deeper insights into the subject and the opportunity to gain personal experience – for example, to realise that they are not alone in their concerns about the future and their commitment to the cause. In addition to events such as the HM-Lectures for Future lecture series and the interdisciplinary, cross-university Johannes B. Ortner Academy for Sustainability and Transformation, I am also involved in a major LMU project on teacher training: Understanding Climate Change and Taking Action.

In what way does your innovation help students to become responsible designers of the future?

Christian Holler: The enormous challenges of this century, such as the climate crisis, can only be tackled through an interdisciplinary approach. However, our universities are still very much organised along disciplinary lines. At best, students get a taste of other subject areas through minor subjects, and even then usually only with fellow students from their own degree programme. Yet interdisciplinary collaboration with other students and academic staff very often changes one’s perspective on one’s own subject area. It brings to light entirely different solutions that one had not even considered before.

How can other lecturers benefit from your innovation?

Christian Holler: As well as providing a platform for presenting our own research findings in the lecture series or at the Academy, we organise informal ‘swaps’ with a few colleagues – that is, swapping a single lecture slot – to expose students to ideas from a completely different subject area. It’s a project we’d like to expand a little in future.

Your teaching philosophy at HM in three words:

Interdisciplinarity, exchange, sustainability