Inside the IMPACT Weeks in Würzburg
Within the master’s Global Challenges for Sustainability curriculum, this mobility allows students to work on important societal challenges identified by the region, city and local companies, fostering international and interdisciplinary teamwork. Over the course of two intensive weeks, participants combined knowledge from different disciplines, engaged with local experts, and developed practical solutions with the potential to create real societal impact.
Tackling Real-World Sustainability Challenges
This year, the CHARM-EU students formed 12 teams to work on 6 different challenges presented by local stakeholders.
Together with the stakeholder WUQM Consulting GmbH, students worked on different topics:
- Climate Concrete: students explored low-carbon construction materials and circular approaches to the built environment.
- Surface Unsealing: this group investigated how permeable surfaces can help cities adapt to increasing heat and extreme rainfall.
- BioElite Fertiliser: this challenge focused on examining innovative waste-derived fertilisers for more sustainable agricultural practices.
Other groups collaborated with Stadtbau Würzburg on:
- Rainwater Management and Living Walls: with the goal of developing nature-based solutions to improve urban resilience and biodiversity.
- Biodiversity Walk Around the Neighbourhood: to encourage stronger connections between residents and urban nature.
Lastly, with WueLAB, students also worked on the challenge of engaging International Students with Sustainability Projects in order to improve participation in sustainability initiatives and campus transformation activities.
CHARM-EU Innovator’s Journey: Sustainability as a Dominant Logic of Entrepreneurship
As part of the CHARM-EU Innovator’s Journey seminar series, the students at the IMPACT Weeks, explored how entrepreneurship can drive sustainable change through an interactive session led by Dr. Ulvi Ibrahimli from the University of Würzburg.
The seminar challenged participants to think beyond sustainability as an add-on and instead consider it as a core principle of entrepreneurial decision-making. Students worked on a sustainable packaging start-up case study, where they applied these concepts to questions of growth, stakeholder engagement, and scaling impact while staying true to a sustainability mission.
Through the CHARM-EU Innovator’s Journey series, students and staff gain insights into entrepreneurship, innovation, and leadership while exploring new ways to address today’s societal and sustainability challenges.
Exploring Sustainability Beyond the Classroom
The challenge-based projects were complemented by a programme of field trips, laboratory visits, and interactive exhibitions that connected students with the local context of Würzburg and Main Franconia.
Students explored topics ranging from water resource management and biodiversity conservation to food systems and global health. Visits included the Water Museum in Zell am Main, where participants learned about water supply challenges and drought resilience; the University of Würzburg’s Biocenter, where researchers presented their work on tropical diseases; and the open-air museum Kirchenburg Mönchsondheim, which showcased historical approaches to food storage and resource management. These experiences provided valuable insights into how sustainability challenges are experienced and addressed in practice.
From Ideas to Action: Student Proposals
Over the course of the weeks, student teams transformed stakeholder challenges into concrete proposals, demonstrating the value of transdisciplinary collaboration and challenge-based learning.
Their proposals ranged from reusing construction materials on university campuses and implementing nature-based solutions in urban environments with living walls or rainwater harvesting systems to promoting biodiversity through interactive community initiatives such as citizen science and exploring new ways to engage international students in sustainability activities with sustainability weeks and ambassador programmes.
Across all challenges, students combined scientific knowledge, stakeholder perspectives, and creative thinking to develop practical solutions with real-world relevance.
The resulting projects demonstrated how collaboration across disciplines, cultures, and institutions can generate fresh perspectives on complex sustainability challenges while creating valuable learning experiences for participants.
Ready to launch your career in sustainability with CHARM-EU? Our unique Master’s in Global Challenges for Sustainability bridges the gap between theory and action. From day one, you will collaborate with key sustainability institutions, NGOs, corporate partners, and think tanks to solve pressing, real-world issues. Applications will open in January 2026.
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