ZEF Director holds UNESCO chair „Education for sustainable development“
July 28, 2011.
ZEF Director Prof. Dr. Paul Vlek was officially inaugurated as a UNESCO chair-holder in Urgench, Uzbekistan, on July 15, 2011. This chair on “Education for sustainable development” is one of 15 chairs initiated and supported by UNESCO worldwide and the first one in Central Asia. Around 50 representatives of the science and education community of Uzbekistan, local and national government as well as of international donor agencies attended the inauguration ceremony taking place at the State University of Urgench in Khorezm, Uzbekistan.
The semester for the newly established chair will start in September 2011. For its curriculum, the chair will draw on the research and experiences derived from the ZEF/UNESCO project in Uzbekistan (starting in 2002), as well as the technical infrastructure it established such as a laboratory for Geographical Information Systems (GIS), remote sensing and soil analysis.
The UNESCO chair in Urgench was established due to a joint effort by the Educational Department of UNESCO in Paris, the UNESCO office in Tashkent, Uzbekistan, and the National Committee of Uzbekistan to UNESCO. It will be supported for a five-year period and integrated into the Faculty of Biological Sciences at the State University of Urgench.