An Indicator-based Approach to Environmental and Resource Management in a Globalised World - Implementing Environmental and Resource Management - page 308

university system. In the year 2001, the Prague Communiqué 5 added three aims to
the declaration: life-long learning should be advanced, the European higher educa-
tion area should be made more attractive, and it should be opened for the partici-
pation of students. Two years later the Berlin Communiqué 6 added some details to
the general declarations, e.g. for national quality controlling. In 2005 the Bergen
Communiqué 7 drew a balance of the achievements so far (speaking of “consider-
able progress”) and set up further aims to be reached by 2010 concerning im-
provement of study structure and recognition of international acknowledgement of
course achievements. In 2007 a London meeting decided that employability of
graduates should be improved as well (a detailed overview of the Bologna process
is found in Wiegleb et al. 2009).
We can summarise that several concepts mentioned in the official texts need
operationalisation, in particular with respect to the questions: What is it that de-
fines an improved study structure? What is it that makes an institution competitive
on the higher education market? And what is it that makes former graduates em-
ployable on a globalised job market? How do topics addressed in research and
practical training of ERM students reflect real world environmental problems? Do
students actively participate in their scientific and professional career formation?
These questions are being tentatively answered by analysing the internationalisa-
tion process at BTU Cottbus.

23.2 Materials and Methods

The first part of the paper is based on the evaluation of various internal documents
at BTU Cottbus, which were compiled in the context of two important evaluation
procedures:

• Reaccreditation of the ERM Bachelor and Master programmes in 2009/2010,
carried out by the accreditation agency ACQUIN.
• International audit of BTU, carried out by an international panel under the
guidance of HRK (German Conference of University Rectors).
In addition, inquiries carried out in the framework of an Alumni+ programme
(funded by DAAD) and a graduate placement study carried out with the help of
INCHER (see Flöther 2010) were used.
The second part is based on an assessment of a series of topics, which have
been published by Springer Publishing (Schmidt et al. 2004, Schmidt et al. 2006,
Schmidt et al. 2011, this volume) and the observation of self-organized alumni ac-
tivities on BTU campus (ERM Board of Students 2010).
5

See http://www.bmbf.de/pub/prager_kommunique.pdf , o r
http://www.ond.vlaanderen.be/hogeronderwijs/Bologna/documents/MDC/PRAGUE_CO
MMUNIQUE.pdf.

6

See http://www.bmbf.de/pub/berlin_communique.pdf.

7

See http://www.bmbf.de/pub/bergen_kommunique_dt.pdf.