This action supports physical and blended mobility of higher education students and staff from EU Member States and third countries associated to Erasmus+ to any country in the world. Students in all study fields and cycles can take part in a study period or traineeship abroad. Higher education teaching and administrative staff can take part in professional development activities abroad, as well as staff from the field of work in order to teach and train students or staff at higher education institutions.

The University of Kassel understands itself as a European college with international and intercultural orientation. Internationalization is an explicit developmental goal and elemental building block for the educational profile of the college. The necessary foundations were already laid down in 2002 with the adoption of the first internationalization concept. The most recent goals for the years 2016-2020 include the following: international orientation of teaching and research offers, promoting the international qualifications of their students, increase the number of academic personnel, completed the teaching stays at partner universities, the internationalization of their administration, etc. To achieve these goals, the Erasmus Program has proved to be an ideal instrument. Since the first participation in the year 1987 the program has continued to develop into an indispensable tool to support the internationalization efforts ofthe University of Kassel.In the 2017 project (2017—1-DE01-KA103-002659) a total of 300 participants were funded. Of these, 159 people completed a student mobility program for study purposes (SMS) at a partner university. The average length of stay per semester amounted to 4 months and 25 days, whereupon a trend towards one semester stays can be seen. Significantly more female students (100) than male students (59) were supported. The most selected countries in the SMS were Spain (33 mobilities), United Kingdom (17 mobilities) and France (16 mobilities). The number of mobilities to Turkey has risen again slightly (13 mobilities). From the 2015 project (24 mobilities) to the 2016 project (9 mobilities), we had a strong slump.In the measure student mobility for internship purposes (SMP), a total of 49 people were supported in the 2017 project. The average duration per internship amounted to 4 months and 14 days. Similar numbers of female (27) and male participants (22) were supported. The most popular countries for internships were Spain (9 funded) United Kingdom (7 funded) and France (5 funded). The program supported three graduate students.The measure of staff mobility for teaching purposes (STA) was used by a total of 28 teachers, nine of whom were female and 19 were male. None of the participants went abroad with a child and none received special support due to a disability. The average duration including travel days was 3.8 days. The most popular countries were Italy (4 mobiles) und Finland/Poland each with 3 mobilities.Sixty four members of the University of Kassel took advantage of the opportunity to continue their education and further training in other European countries within the framework of staff mobility. This is the highest number of mobilities so far. 51 of the participants were female and 13 male. Special subsidies for participation with a child or disability were not awarded. The average length of stay was 4.7 days. Travel days were not financially subsidized. The most popular destinations were: Spain and Malta, each with 12 mobilities and Ireland (9 mobilities).Each additional Erasmus project participation, and thus the project 2017, contributes substantially to the internationalization of the University of Kassel as well as the city and region. Students participating in the program have made an international / intercultural and linguistic profile during their stay abroad. They have grown personally and professionally, and have significantly increased their value on the job market. Students who come from partner universities to Kassel shape the intercultural learning and working environment at the university through their presence on the campus and through their participation in seminars and lectures. As a result, the Erasmus program also indirectly enables non-mobile students to further qualify at home in Kassel with international / intercultural skills.The measure of continuing mobility, which is becoming increasingly popular, is proving to be an ideal instrument for promoting the internationalization of university administration. The participation in language courses, staff training weeks and workshops made it possible for the university staff of the University of Kassel to further develop professionally and personally in other European countries on an international level. As part of the student mobility initiative, the Erasmus program enables more and more students to gain valuable practical experience in Europe while still studying, which is essential today and greatly increases the chances of graduates on the job market. The answers given in the EU Surveys regarding the satisfaction of the participants show that, across all 4 measures, there is a high level of satisfaction with the program.

Grand and persistent social-ecological challenges, such as climate change, push forward a rapidly growing discourse on how sustainability science can support society in dealing with today’s global crises. Between studying change and contributing to change, sustainability science seeks both to analytically understand sustainability problems, but also to design interventions that can contribute solution-options to these problems. However, knowledge about how to intervene in order to reach a desirable vision (i.e., transformation knowledge) is typically missing. Especially how to deliberately engage with values as places of intervention (leverage points), as proposed by the Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services, remains a critical knowledge gap. To fill these gaps, LEVER aims to critically develop and apply a transformative theory and practice to support the (co-)production of transformation knowledge, including a focus on transformation knowledge necessary to investigate and unleash values as leverage points for sustainability transformation. To this end, LEVER originally combines transdisciplinary research with the empirically rigorous methods of social science experiments. The scientific breakthrough consists in delivering an integrated theory of transformative research, capable of representing the many co-evolving links between its design principles, philosophy of science, normative assumptions, and ethical dimensions. Methodologically, LEVER opens new avenues on how to produce transformation knowledge, by experimenting with, testing and evaluating novel transformative methods. Finally, LEVER seeks to answer the globally relevant and timely question of how to unleash values. Using a treatment and control group experimental design, LEVER assesses the impact of values-targeting interventions and demonstrates the potential of values as leverage points. LEVER pioneers a salient conscious science-society relationship in Europe.