Students from Hochschule Bremen take part in a STARS EU event in Portugal

At the beginning of May 2025, ten students from various degree programs in economics and architecture met with 30 other students from five more STARS EU partner universities for a one-week intensive course on project work in the context of “Sustainability & Management” at the Instituto Bragança Polytechnic University. For the Economics Departmants, Prof. Dr. Stephan Form and Prof. Dr. Martin Holi supportet the Blended Intensive Program (BIP) at the event. For the first time, the BIP took place as part of the Thematic Interest Group “Entrepreneurship & Innovation”, as a combination of online and face-to-face events.

“The students worked together in international teams during the week.They learned both the theoretical concepts of sustainability and their application in case studies in cooperation with companies from the partner countries,” explains Prof. Dr. Martin Holi. In addition to the theoretical foundations of sustainable management, the program included a week of intensive case study work and company visits, during which the students developed sustainability strategies for companies in cross-university teams. “Working with companies from different European countries enables the student teams to develop different perspectives and apply these to real business issues as part of the case study work,” adds Prof. Dr. Stephan Form.

In addition to the theoretical and practical aspects of sustainability management, the participants also visited companies in the industrial and service sectors in northern Portugal in order to develop a deeper understanding of the opportunities and challenges involved in implementing sustainability strategies.

The BIP was developed under the leadership of the Bragança Polytechnic University (Portugal) in collaboration with professors and lecturers from Hochschule Bremen, the University of La Laguna in Tenerife (Spain), the Silesian University in Opava (Czech Republic), the Cracow University of Technology (Poland) and the Aleksandër Moisiu University of Durrës (Albania).

About STARS EU:

Hochschule Bremen - City University of Applied Sciences (HSB) is a member of the STARS EU university alliance. The abbreviation stands for Strategic Alliance for Regional Transition European University. Since November 2023, STARS EU has been funded by the EU with 12.4 million euros, initially until October 2027. In addition to HSB, universities in the Netherlands, Sweden, France, Spain, Portugal, the Czech Republic, Poland and Albania are involved.

STARS EU is a great opportunity to further promote the internationalization of Hochschule Bremen in Europe. The alliance combines the strengths of nine traditional, complementary European universities. The overarching goal is to build an alliance of committed universities in order to establish a future-oriented European university. It aims to create a new generation of students and innovative, flexible and diverse education and challenge-based research systems.

At the regular STARS EU conferences and working meetings, ideas can be developed and taken forward - for example on the topics of energy transition, the circular economy, start-ups and innovation or health and how the nine universities can learn from each other. Bremen and the region benefit from STARS EU.