Sustainability, Internationalisation and Inclusion

Inditex-UDC Sustainability Chair

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Closing of the eighth edition of the CESIS of the Inditex-UDC Chair of Sustainability.

The Inditex-UDC Sustainability Chair is a knowledge transfer initiative to promote sustainability and social responsibility within the university community and society in general. It was created as a space for community reflection, academic training and applied research on sustainability and social innovation for public administrations, universities, companies and non-profit organisations.

In the area of training, the Chair is developing the Sustainability and Social Innovation Specialisation Course (CESIS), a UDC-specific qualification that already has 242 students. The 8th edition was held this year and received 105 pre-enrolment applications, with 27 students taking part. Eight of them have received tuition endowments from Inditex. Through this specialisation course, 625 hours of certified training have been given, divided between ordinary sessions and seminars, workshops, tutorials, conferences and visits to companies. Teaching is done by professors from the professional field, teachers from UDC and other centres. Thirty-five guest lecturers taught during this academic year.

To promote the transfer of knowledge to social organisations, CESIS students worked in teams during the first half of 2019 and in collaboration with non-profit organisations in their immediate surroundings on the development of five action plans in response to challenges in economic, social, environmental and good governance sustainability.

In the area of dissemination, the Chair has conducted the 8th edition of the Open Source lecture series, with the participation of Spanish Red Cross General Coordinator Antoni Bruel; Professor Antonio Martínez-Pujalte, director of the TEMPE-APSA Chair on Disability and Employability at the Miguel Hernández University of Elche; and Professor Emeritus James E. Austin, co-founder of the Social Enterprise Initiative at the Harvard Business School.

Finally, in the field of applied research, the Chair hosts the preparation of UDC’s Annual Report on Social Responsibility, which this year was published under the title “Building the future through collaboration with business and equal opportunities”. This document, which is drafted under the joint technical coordination of the Vice-Rectorate for Social Responsibility and the UDC Social Council, is an exercise in transparency and accountability that aims to connect the university community with the companies in its surroundings.

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