The current world situation is increasingly dominated by social and environmental challenges such as climate change, poverty, inequality, exclusion or aging societies. Against this backdrop, social innovations are gaining more and more importance as novel approaches to address these complex and multi-layered problems. The “Master of Arts in Sustainable Entrepreneurship & Social Innovation” (MASESIN) program offers a unique learning environment to develop social innovations in politics, economy and society for students who want to actively contribute to the transformation towards a more sustainable world.
Programme structure
The core of the curriculum is therefore a Social Innovation Project (SIP) consisting of six modules, in which student teams are guided through the development path of their own social innovation. The goal of the SIP courses is to empower students to analyze sustainable development issues from a multinational perspective in order to create solutions to society’s challenges. This requires an understanding of change processes and social entrepreneurship at a conceptual level and, at the same time, the ability to think, develop, present, implement, measure and improve concepts for their own social and environmental innovative change projects. Through cooperation with partner universities in countries of the Global South, the SIP is deliberately conceptualised as international and multi-perspective.
In addition to the SIP, students learn to reflect on the individual steps of their SIP from a theoretically sound perspective with modules on the topics of – among others – personal and intercultural competencies, economic framework conditions of sustainable development, sustainable entrepreneurship, business model development, digital transformation, new work, impact measurement and sustainability controlling.
Career opportunities
Graduates of this program are able to work in organizations that are engaged in the development, planning and implementation of social transformation processes as well as in the consulting and coaching industry (e.g. for intermediaries) and are well prepared to found their own social startup.
Teaching and learning concept
The master program offers an open and innovative teaching and learning environment according to triple loop learning and the teaching of relevant competencies to achieve the Sustainable Development Goals of the United Nations: Systems thinking, anticipation, normative competence, strategic competence, collaboration, critical thinking, self-awareness and integrated problem-solving competence. To this end, knowledge transfer is based on a high level of interactivity with workshops, case studies, experts and practitioners participating in the discussion of key concepts, theories, frameworks and new ideas for creating, developing and enabling social innovation in Germany and internationally.
In our understanding, the university of the future must be a place where talent and creativity are discovered and developed. It must encourage and enable students to be a “change maker”, to take initiative and develop leadership skills, to create space for their own ideas and experiences. The learning process must transcend the boundaries between faculties and disciplines, as well as the boundaries between the university and its surrounding society. Learning in this understanding is based on action and reflection – only in this way can we think beyond borders: from village to city to region to world. In one word: Glocalization.
Overview
Master's programme
Faculty
Sustainable Economy
Degree
Master of Arts
Standard period of study
four semesters
Admission
- Language skills German B2, English B2
- First university degree (Bachelor) needs to entail at least 180 ECTS credits in economics or a degree program with an economics component. You must be able to prove that from this first degree at least 30 ECTS credits stem from thematically different economics modules and these ECTS credits should not come from transfer modules or your thesis. "Pure" business administration modules such as general business administration and marketing must be represented with a total of 10 ECTS credits.
Language of instruction
German, English