CCES Winter School 2017
Now in its 7th year, the CCES Winter School "Science meets Practice" took place in early January and February 2017 at Propstei Wislikofen (AG). A total of 19 participants, PhDs and postdocs from institutions of the ETH domain and internationally, took part in proceedings. During the first block in January, participants learned about theories, methods and practices in managing and facilitating a dialogue between scientists and practitioners, including a new module on team dynamics and collaborating at the science-practice interface. A team of motivated and experienced coaches facilitated the inputs and guided the implementation tasks, who in 2017 included Christian Pohl, Pius Krütli and Carolina Adler from TdLab, as well as experienced consultants Prof Christoph Clases and Dr Patricia Fry. During the second block in February, participants put these skills and methods into practice through various workshops and interactions with stakeholders from administration at the municipal and cantonal levels, as well as the local community of Wislikofen.
Inspired by principles of co-production of knowledge, the topic for this year’s winter school was jointly selected and refined with the help of the Mayor of Wislikofen, and it centred on a topic of local interest and relevance, that of municipal amalgamations and how this administrative and political process could have implications for sustainable development in the region, for instance with regards to town planning. The experience for participants, coaches and stakeholders alike was a very positive one, yielding many great initiatives to continue supporting a fruitful collaboration between science and practice at Wislikofen. A local newspaper article was also published that describes this interaction between participants and the local community, a copy of that article can be downloaded Downloadhere (PDF, 2.5 MB)vertical_align_bottom.
Given the closure of CCES at the end of 2016, an official administrative handover of the “Winter School” from CCES to the TdLab took place last December, signalling a new phase of preparations to operationalise the Winter School with a new concept and identity under TdLab for the period 2017–2020. To coincide with this timing, a new Winter School Coordinator has been appointed to take over from Carolina Adler, who takes up a new executive management role at the Mountain Research Initiative, effective from May 2017. Bin Bin Pearce from TdLab will take up her role as the new Coordinator of the Winter School from 1 April 2017.
We would like to thank Carolina for the work done as Coordinator for the Winter School since 2014, and for facilitating a transition from CCES to TdLab, and we take this opportunity to also wish Bin Bin all the best with the next new phase. Information regarding the upcoming “new” Winter School for 2018 will be announced by summer 2017. For more information, please contact Dr Bin Bin Pearce or visit our web site.