Curriculum Change Initiative Call

Join us for the next Curriculum Change Initiative Call and shape what you are being taught at your university. To learn more about the Curriculum Change Initiative, please go here.
When? – September 13 at 2 pm
Where? – on Zoom: https://zoom.us/j/431549435.
Who? – Lenka and J.Christopher will welcome all oikees interested in changing economics education.
Let’s work on Curriculum Reform together!
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oikos International

posted August 29, 2019

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LEAP Advanced: At the outset of a life long journey

The LEAP Advanced is a training program designed to empower and educate better leaders for a sustainable tomorrow. Applications for the Advanced Cohort 2019/2020 are now open. In this brief article, LEAP advanced participants Gregory Vrient and Katharina Buiten describe their LEAP journey and insights on leadership.

Our journey spanned across 9 months and included monthly webinars, peer-to-peer and individual coaching calls. While the webinars provided theoretical knowledge on leadership, coaching calls and three written reflections help the participants develop their practical skills through discussions and exercises.

An unforgettable part of the program are on-site meetings, where the participants from across the globe gather together. This year, Leysin (Switzerland) and Belgrade (Serbia) were chosen as destination points of the program. Coaching team, made of former LEAP participants, put together a comprehensive agenda. Their workshops tackled subjects as diverse as conflict mediation, communications, project management, emotional awareness, and many more. We improved skills like listening, asking powerful questions, and having impactful, improved and meaningful conversations.

Leadership is not about managing others or telling them what to do. Leadership is an all-levels practice and attitude, that is meant to drive people forward and bring out the best in them. Inspiring people and encouraging them to take the initiative is a lot more effective than assigning tons of small debilitating tasks. LEAP opens up possibilities for developing this new approach towards leadership and is designed to help just about anyone to become a better leader.

Leadership is an interpersonal art, performed through communications, that aim learning about each other. But to understand others, we need to not only listen to them but also to listen to ourselves. It may not seem clear to most of us, but our actions and choices define us, as Dumbledore said. This self-definition is quite often, if not always, the fruit of our experience, our values, our principles and the reason we do everything we do – Our “Why?”. LEAP encourages us to reflect on those aspects of our life.

The most important element of the LEAP program are the people and the environment. The oikos community has this awesome power to bring together strangers and unite them around the shared passion for sustainability. This common set of values and our driving principles allow us to create a reliable, safe space, like none other, one that transcends boundaries and forges international bonds.

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oikos International

posted August 19, 2019

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Curriculum Change Initiative Brainstorming Call

 We are happy to invite you to our brainstorming Curriculum Change call. Join us via Zoom at 7pm here: https://zoom.us/s/2032031203
If you can’t join but want to run curriculum change projects at your university or internationally, write to lenka.kepkova@oikos-
international.org.
The next call which will kickstart the whole Initiative is going to be in September. Read more information about the Curriculum Change Initiative here.
Look forward to reforming economics and management education together!
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oikos International

posted August 13, 2019

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oikos Newsletter August 2019

Welcome to the August edition of our newsletter! Today, we celebrate World Youth Day, and in that the incredible potential of youth to be change-makers that the world desperately needs today.

On this warm August day, we want to share information on our upcoming projects, get you inspired and offer opportunities for engaging with the youth for a greater sustainable impact. Read through our newsletter to learn about the FutureLab, oikos Leadership Program – LEAP, alumni Unconference in St.Gallen and more.

READ THE WHOLE NEWSLETTER HERE

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oikos International

posted August 12, 2019

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Presentation: Engaging local student organizations in Positive Impact Rating

On 26th August at 17:00 CEST, oikos and other youth organizations will present Positive Impact Rating.

oikos is one of the organizations participating in the process of creation of the Positive Impact Rating (PIR). PIR is an international innovative university rating to bring a change in the higher education system and encourage institutions to equip their students to tackle the environmental and societal challenges of today and tomorrow.

The purpose of the Positive Impact Rating is “measuring how business schools contribute to the resolution of societal challenges by energizing the school and its culture, by educating current and future leaders, by providing relevant research results and offers for continuing education, by participating in the public debate and by being a role model institution”.

Help us scale up the level of engagement in this innovative rating system and invite your home institution to participate in a ranking system that seeks to identify universities that are the best for the world. Will you join us? The multitude of global institutions and other student organizations coming together to improve our university ranking system. Don’t miss the chance to be a part of such a beautiful journey and help get closer to the oikos vision.

By running this rating in your own higher education institution, you would give a voice to students and provide them with an opportunity to influence and make the change towards bringing a greater positive impact on students and society.

Come and ask all your questions during the information call on August 26th at 17:00 CEST. 

Join us with the following URL: https://zoom.us/j/787176541

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oikos International

posted August 12, 2019

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oikos President’s Open Office Hours

Join the oikos President on 20th August from 5:00 to 7:00 pm CEST. Ask questions, share your ideas, project updates or any other news. The floor of our virtual office is yours!

For more information and meeting URL, please visit the oikos Podio Intranet.

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oikos International

posted August 12, 2019

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Movie Screening: Burkinabè Rising

oikos Baku and their local partners are hosting a movie screening for Burkinabè Rising: The Art of Resistance in Burkina Faso.

Learn more here.

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oikos International

posted August 6, 2019

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30 seconds with Carlos Vargas

This month, we ask you to take 30 seconds to meet Carlos Vargas, former oikos PhD fellow in Sustainable Finance (2017). During his time at oikos, Carlos was also responsible for running the oikos Case Writing Competition and was involved in other programs such as the PhD Academy and the Future Lab. Today, Carlos is a professor of Finance at EGADE Business School at Tecnologico de Monterrey in Mexico. He also teaches at Harvard Summer and Extension Schools. 

In this brief letter, Carlos reminisces his oikos experience and discusses his insights on sustainable finance.

In 2015, when I was planning to start my PhD in 2015, I found out about oikos while looking for Case Studies on Sustainable Finance for the class I teach at Harvard. I was very impressed to see all the different programs and activities that oikos promoted and eventually I applied for a PhD fellowship. 

Being part of oikos was great for me. It allowed me to successfully complete my  Ph.D., which was a lifetime goal for me and I was also able to meet outstanding people in my time there. I learned a lot, but perhaps, the people I met, and the friendships I made, are what I appreciate the most from my time at oikos. 

Sustainable Finance is my passion. I started working in this field over 8 or 9 years ago when it was still something new and unexplored. First time I started teaching on this subject I was even able to read all books published in the subject. Today, it is a totally different reality. 

Especially after the Financial crisis, a lot of people started to realize that the financial world was not necessarily doing things the best way possible, and some of these concepts and practices started to thrive. In addition to that, newer generations probe to be more engaged and proactive towards Sustainable Finance. We want to do things differently, we want to make a positive change. Finally, technological advancement has allowed for more sophisticated and effective impact measurement, this could have not been done some years ago.  

Nowadays, we have reached the point when Sustainable Finance enters the mainstream and becomes an important subject, and reaching that point means a lot to me. I truly believe this is how we design the future of finance, and it is already happening

This summer, I concluded my PhD at the Institute of Banking and Finance at the University of Zurich. I have got a professorship in Finance at EGADE Business School at Tecnologico de Monterrey in Mexico, and I still teach at Harvard Summer and Extension Schools. I have many professional and academic goals at the moment, some of which are very related to developing more the field of Sustainable Finance. 

Looking back I am just happy I was able to be part of oikos. It has been a great opportunity and has been definitely instrumental in the fulfilment of my professional and academic goals. 

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oikos International

posted August 5, 2019

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