SUNRAISE (Sustainable Natural Resources Managent in the Arctics and High Mountains)

SUNRAISE (Sustainable Natural Resources Managent in the Arctics and High Mountains) project:

SUNRAISE (Sustainable Natural Resource Use in Arctic and High Mountainous Areas / SUNRAISE) is a Cooperation for innovation and the exchange of good practices Capacity Building in the field of Higher Education supported by EU Erasmus+ programme and the project SUNRAISE aims to promote sustainable management of Arctic and high mountainous ecosystems in Bhutan, India and Russia (partner countries PCs) through enhanced tertiary education linked to labour markets and wider stakeholder circles. While the project is a collaboration among the eleven Institutions (Universitat Bremen, Paris-London UNiversitat, Salzburg, Estonian University of Life Sciences, Russian State Hydrometereological University, Federal State Autonomous Educational Institution for HE, Gorno-Altaisk State University, Altai-Sayan Mountain Partnership, Royal University of Bhutan, Kumaun University, Jawaharlal Nehru University, Central Himalayan Environment Association)covering six countries (Austria, Bhutan, Estonia, Germany, India, Russia).

This aim will be achieved through the following objectives:

To revise and upgrade selected BSc, MSc & PhD programs in partner Insttitutions (PIs) to make them end-user-oriented & policy-relevant, and enhance opportunities for higher learning education.

To develop SUNRAISE open education environment Platform (SUNRAISER) and online training services of the new generation (MOOC) for qualitative improvement of the education process and academic workflow support among universities and stakeholders across the PCs and EU Member States.

To create sustainable feedback mechanisms to end-users, ensuring adaptive and practice-relevant teaching contents, knowledge co-production opportunities and stakeholder support to post-project course development and teaching.

To develop capacity for academic mobility, shared experimental facilities and joint research by PIs and beyond.

Achieving of these objectives will significantly enhance the quality of educational provision in PCs, as the expertise of the whole consortium will become available to individual and group learners (including the students from other programs). The flexibility of learning trajectories will increase, the course contents will quicker reflect upon current and prospective demands of employers, and, with enhanced teaching and learning techniques, the overall learning process will become more productive.

Availability of online e-learning tools will make the SUNRAISE contents available to learners from remote regions, who’s ability for physical presence at training venues is limited. PhD students will access research facilities at other PCIs through joint research arrangements and benefit from new methods and richer data for their thesis; this will strengthen exchange of expertise through the SUNRAISE network, and help to develop new areas of competence at PC universities.

Likewise, revision of research agendas PhD studies and integrating to them emerging problems and methods, will build teaching capacity at PCHEIs and motivate business and policy actors to engage in closer cooperation. The proposed vehicles for such engagement are national (RU) and regional (IN+BT) SUNRAISE sector collaborative platforms to be set-up for the Arctic and High Mountainous Areas (A&HMSCP in Ru & HMSCP in BT+IN) to create a community of practice, where academia would disseminate innovative ideas and visions of the future, while praxis partners enhance educational provision with their in-hand experiences and know-hows, review curricula, participate QA mechanisms and support graduates’ entry to workplace.