Karin Rebel appointed Professor of Sustainability Science & Education
Karin Rebel has been appointed Professor of Sustainability Science & Education starting from 15 March 2023. The chair is embedded in the Department of Sustainable Development (Copernicus Institute)’s Environmental Sciences section at the Faculty of Geosciences. The role will combine innovation in challenge-based learning around inter- and transdisciplinary sustainability education with her research exploring the role of natural vegetation in climate.
The Strategic Plan of the Faculty of Geosciences for 2025 states that ‘sustainability will be the central priority and overarching theme for our education and research in the coming strategic period’. Rebel’s appointment intends to strengthen sustainability education by developing, offering, and researching transdisciplinary, challenge-based learning for sustainability, and actively inviting collaboration with societal partners. The chair is also embedded in the Strategic Theme Pathways to Sustainability.
Combining research, education and impact
“Education that equips students with the skills to address complex, often global sustainability challenges requires excellent disciplinary grounding, as well as the integration of various disciplines, and collaboration with society,” says Rebel. She believes that the future of sustainability education is on the interface of research, education, and impact. “This is why I am working on strengthening the interaction and link between researchers, students and societal partners”.
“We are thrilled with the appointment of Karin Rebel. With her extensive knowledge, experience and ambitions around challenge-based learning in sustainability education, she will help our research and teaching lead the way to a more sustainable future,” says Wilco Hazeleger, Dean of the Faculty of Geosciences.
I am working on strengthening the interaction and link between researchers, students and societal partners
Rebel has a PhD in Environmental Information Science from Cornell University in the United States and has been employed at the Department of Sustainable Development since 2008. Her environmental research combines a modelling, experimental and data analysis approach to quantify how much carbon dioxide is taken up by vegetation, and how this is changing with changing environmental conditions like climate change, and water and nutrient availability.
Innovation in education
For the last ten years, Rebel’s focus has also been on innovation in sustainability education. She played a key role in setting up the international, interdisciplinary flagship Bachelor’s programme Global Sustainability Science, and currently is a Principal Fellow at Utrecht University’s Centre for Academic Teaching and Learning. Utrecht2040, a location-based, multiplayer, serious game developed on Rebel’s initiative has already been played by thousands of Utrecht University students. “By playing the game, students get the feeling that they belong to something bigger, explore how sustainability relates to their own discipline, and work together to create a vision of the best possible version of Utrecht in 2040,” she says.
More recently Rebel has worked on inter-university collaboration in the EWUU Alliance, investigating whether is possible to offer high-quality challenge-based education in an online setting, using the virtual classroom. With a team of researchers and teachers, she set up a novel course between Eindhoven University of Technology, Wageningen University & Research and Utrecht University, bringing together each university’s disciplinary strength.