Le développement durable à UniDistance Suisse

Sustainability at UniDistance Suisse

Our values – responsibility, integrity, innovation and enthusiasm – reflect our mission: to provide access to quality education for those who are unable or do not wish to attend the more traditional universities. Lifelong learning, in all of life’s situations, guarantees lasting development, socially, environmentally and economically.

Read our objectives with regard to sustainable development (in French and German)

Our objectives and measures

Our objectives with regard to sustainability revolve around three priorities: raising awareness, creating a sense of responsibility and supporting.

It is therefore a matter of raising the awareness of students and employees in respect of sustainable development, giving them the means to act and standing alongside them when they take initiatives to that end.

We support those of our students that take part in U-change, a programme to encourage student initiatives aimed at sustainable development. We inform our students whenever a call for proposals is issued and can answer their questions related to submitting project proposals .

UniDistance Suisse has set up a new Sustainability Service as a point of contact for students and staff members, who can seek counsel regarding their sustainable projects and help in making their ideas come to life.

Specialist office

Tobias Schöpfer
Head of Quality assurance
tobias.schoepfer@fernuni.ch

Participate and contribute to making UniDistance Suisse more sustainable. We will be glad to hear your ideas and suggestions. If you have any questions or if you want to participate, get in touch with us through the form below.

Contact form

Social sustainability

Our flexible distance learning courses are accessible to people in situations that would not allow them to study at a more conventional university.

This concerns, among others:

people who are working and who aspire to better professional prospects
people who are busy looking after their family and who will go back to work when their children have grown up
people with reduced mobility who can study at home and, thus, reduce their need to travel
people living a long way away from urban centres, who can study at home, thereby reducing the need to travel.
elite athletes, sportsmen and sportswomen who are preparing for their career change.

Through the range of courses, programmes and services we offer, we contribute to equal opportunities and to lifelong learning.

Find out how studies work at UniDistance Suisse and get in touch with us if you require particular arrangements or support for your studies.

Our human resources policy also embodies this determination to achieve equality and balance.

Environmental sustainability

Building

Le bâtiment d'UniDistance Suisse à Brigue

Building

Our new building meets the Minergie standards, which exceed the legal requirements with regard to energy consumption. There is plenty of natural light, reducing the need for artificial lighting. It has a ‘living’ roof planted up to absorb rainwater; most of the plot is given over to nature, with a garden planted with local tree species and water features. Parking spaces for electric cars and bicycles are provided for employees. Finally, potential for an extension to the building was taken into account at the design stage.

Did you know? It is estimated that around 45% of energy consumption in Switzerland is attributable to buildings – as well as a third of CO2 emissions.

Transport

Distance learning is in our DNA. So, to us, it’s only natural for journeys to be reduced to a minimum –for our teams as well as for the students. So, for example, …

All our employees are offered am SBB Half-Fare Travelcard. This is reflected in the fact that most of them use public transport.
Although we are based in Brig, we ensure that we hold the attended group classes in central cities such as Lausanne, Fribourg or Bern in order to reduce students’ journey times.
The students have to travel less than once a month on average for their studies. This is also the case for most of the lecturers.

Economic sustainability

UniDistance Suisse represents an opportunity for the economic development of the canton of Valais: it draws talented people to the region by creating attractive jobs. It also addresses the lack of skilled and qualified employees through its state-of-the-art programmes of studies. Finally, it offers the possibility of taking a course in tandem with work, thus contributing to the professional retraining of working people.

Did you know? The Master’s in Artificial Intelligence generated 26 high value-added jobs between October 2018 and January 2020.

Research and sustainability

Our researchers make significant contributions to the sustainable development objectives, whether it is a matter of economic globalisation, new technologies or economic law and digitalisation in the Faculty of Law, nutrition, lifelong learning, intercultural exchange or emotional interaction in the Faculty of Psychology, environmental and energy choices in the Faculty of Economics or postcolonial dynamics in the Faculty of History.

Research at UniDistance Suisse