Stand-alone courses in strategic leadership for sustainability
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Our department offers many independent distance learning courses in the field of strategic leadership for sustainability. Education is such an important part of sustainable development, and we place great emphasis on designing and developing our courses to achieve genuine learning. Most of our courses involve live interaction with our teaching staff, lots of feedback, and group projects. We look forward to you joining us on your learning journey in whichever course suits you best.
“My biggest take away from this week is sitting in on the introductory seminar with more than 100 other fellow humans. As the urgency of the new climate regime swept me off my feet . . . Listening to the alarming facts. But this time not feeling pushed, not treated as someone who needs to be convinced. Instead, I experienced a calm and open welcoming, offering the option of looking at things in many more ways. The climate facts are clear, the work that is needed is not about finding alternative ways to interpret them. Instead, what I experienced in the setting of this course was an opening towards alternative ways of communicating and working around them. A week in, I’m feeling hopeful about adopting an attitude that I have neither shared nor had towards the crisis so far – the learning attitude.”
– Magdalena Musiala, student Foundations for Strategic Sustainable Development
Spring semester 2026
Are you interested in learning how to support behavior change for sustainability? We offer a practical, interactive course from the comfort of your own home (or wherever you want to study). You will learn some basic theory and then practice designing behavior change interventions for sustainability. You will benefit from a mix of live online classes with the teachers, time to study on your own, and working in your group—a total of 20 hours per week. At the end of the course, you will be ready to use several techniques in real life.
The aim of the course is for students to develop 1) knowledge and understanding of society's sustainability challenges and their root causes, 2) knowledge and understanding of a structuring and coordinating methodology for strategic sustainable development, including its scientific basis, and 3) skills in critically reflecting on a structuring and coordinating methodology for strategic sustainable development.
In this course, you will learn how to work systematically with environmental issues in companies and other organizations using environmental management systems. You will learn about environmental management standards, ISO 14001 and EMAS, and develop your skills in the practical preparation of key documents belonging to an environmental management system. In this way, you will develop the ability to address environmental issues in a business in a strategic and systematic manner in order to achieve continuous improvement.
What is sustainability and how can we describe sustainable development? These are concepts that are now used at all levels of society, but which nevertheless often lack clarity. This course provides you with basic knowledge of how sustainability can be defined and knowledge and skills in how the path to sustainability can be strategically planned. The course also provides insight into how various systems essential to sustainable development, such as the energy system and the food system, relate to this development.
Would you like to learn more about social sustainability and develop the necessary skills to work with social sustainability issues in a technical environment? Product and service development plays a key role in society's transition to sustainability, and the social dimension of sustainability is often overlooked. By product and service development, we mean the development of all types of offerings, including physical products, digital products, services, and any combination thereof. Improved knowledge and skills in how to integrate social sustainability goals into product and service development enable more optimized overall system solutions. At the end of this course, you will be able to analyze the social sustainability effects of products and services from a strategic perspective and identify strategic solutions to them.
The purpose of this course is to support students in jointly developing a support portfolio for strategic sustainable development. The course focuses on a general approach to structuring the exploration of various concepts, methods, and tools in sustainable development, and then exploring some of these in detail. Students should leave the course with a good overview of which tools, methods, and concepts to use, which critical questions to ask, and which considerations to be aware of during implementation.
“A heartfelt thank you to Dana Bergman and the entire team at Blekinge Institute of Technology for the incredible journey through the Foundations for Strategic Sustainable Development course. The past 3 months has been an enriching experience, filled with invaluable insights that have expanded my understanding and shaped my perspective on sustainable development. Dana Bergman, your guidance has been instrumental, leading such a remarkable course.”
– Ernesto Ceron, student Foundations for Strategic Sustainable Development