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Sustainability transitions increasingly depend on engineers who can work across disciplines and sectors to translate technical insight into socially robust action. Challenge-based learning has emerged as a promising educational approach to build these capabilities. Here we show how the 4TU.Responsible Sustainability Challenge, a 15 ECTS interuniversity MSc honors program, operationalized transdisciplinary sustainability education through real-world cases aligned with the EU Green Deal.

Over three academic years (2022 to 2025), diverse teams of five to eight master鈥檚 students collaborated with academic experts and external stakeholders on challenges posed by seven organizations (including ProRail, KLM, and Alliander), supported by workshops, micro courses, and coaching, with 34 students participating overall.

We find that the program鈥檚 strongest educational value came less from deeply engineered solutions than from structured stakeholder engagement, negotiation, and the iterative reframing of ill-defined problems -- skills participants reported transferring directly into early career practice. Yet the initiative also exposed organizational bottlenecks that complicate coordination across institutions. These lessons offer a practical roadmap for institutions aiming to embed sustainability leadership via challenge-based learning and seeking to build coordination capacity across universities around a shared vision.

Next to presenting the course, we will introduce 4TU.Energy and discuss what role cross-university alliances can play in our education on sustainability.

This session will be led by Maja R眉cker (assistant professor at Mechanical Engineering), and is open to teachers and professional staff. Registration is free and can be done . Free lunch and drinks will also be available to those attending in person.

For inquiries, email academylearningteaching@tue.nl.