Igor Sikorsky Kyiv Polytechnic Institute (KPI) has been giving priority to research and teaching activities related to sustainable development since 2005.
The international aspect of these activities became more pronounced when KPI Rector Mykhailo Zgurovsky was elected as President of the Black Sea Universities Network (BSUN) in 2008. BSUN comprises more than 100 universities from 12 member countries of the Black Sea Economic Cooperation Organization.
During a meeting with Mykhailo Zgurovsky in February 2007, Romanian President Traian Basescu estimated highly BSUN’s contribution to the transformation of the Black Sea region into a zone of stability and security on the European continent. Mr. Basescu also expressed support to new BSUN projects with the participation of KPI, including research projects related to sustainable development.
On June 26, 2008 the Central and Eastern European Institute for Sustainable Development was established, whose main tasks are training of specialists and research in sustainable development. KPI Rector Mykhailo Zgurovsky, Sergii Sidorenko, KPI Vice-Rector for International Relations, and Borys Tsyhanok, Head of the KPI Foreign Relations Office, participated in the inauguration ceremony that took place in the municipal hall in the town of Slavutych, Kyiv region.
In 2008 KPI hosted the Forum on Higher Education devoted to sustainable development, bringing together rectors from BSUN member universities. During the event its participants passed the Kyiv Declaration on relevant problems and circulated it to governments of all European countries as well as to the United Nations, UNESCO and UNIDO, among others.
In 2007-2009 the KPI Institute for Applied System Analysis developed and launched the joint master’s and PhD degree program in sustainable development and governance within global and regional contexts. The program is 18-month (three-semester) courses whereby lectures about the fundamentals of society’s sustainable development are delivered to all KPI students.
KPI offered the English-taught master’s degree program in sustainable development in 2010 through the platform of cooperation between 10 leading universities of technology, which are based in capitals of Central and Eastern Europe. In addition, the program was presented to the Tokyo-based United Nations University.
For many years the comprehensive program in sustainable development has been progressing well at the KPI Institute for Applied System Analysis (http://iasa.kpi.ua) and the World Data Center (http://wdc.org.ua).
Based on the concept of sustainable development, the model of evaluation of various ecological and socioeconomic systems (enterprises, businesses, industries, regions and countries) was created under the guidance of KPI Rector Mykhailo Zgurovsky, who is also the member of the National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine (NASU). Criteria and approaches to the selection of relevant indicators were made, and global and regional risks impacting the processes of sustainable development substantiated. Further, an approach to a problem of adjusting different data in interdisciplinary research was generalized. The techniques of the correct transformation of data in consideration of the peculiarities of their measurement (individual linear and nonlinear data normalization methods, as well as techniques of a bijective combination of data measured on nominal scales) and the methods of quantitative assessment of data consistency have been developed.
It is worth noting too that according to the SDG Index, Ukraine ranks 37th among 193 UN member states (https://dashboards.sdgindex.org/rankings).
The World Data Center for Geoinformatics and Sustainable Development analyzed the efficiency of government policy and state administration on the strength of the concept of society’s sustainable development.
KPI has been participating in the Times Higher Education (THE) Impact Rankings since 2019.
Launched in 2019, this is a relatively new ranking whose global performance tables assess university development strategies against the 17 United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), as well as the degree of implementation of universities’ policies targeting the SDGs. According to its methodology, THE Impact Rankings tracks the influence of the ideology of sustainable development on reforms in the university performance.
A record 1,524 institutions from 110 countries or regions have participated in the THE Impact Rankings 2022, a 23% increase since 2021, reflecting the growing importance universities are attaching to the SDGs globally.
Overall, there are 26 ranked Ukrainian institutions compared with 15 in 2021. KPI improved its global ranking in SDG 7 (affordable and clean energy), reaching the 201-300 band. This is the strong result demonstrating that KPI is highly competitive globally.
In Ukraine specifically, KPI is second for SDG 7; fifth for SDG 6 (clean water and sanitation), SDG 12 (responsible consumption and production), SDG 14 (life below water); and 11th for SDG 16 (peace, justice and strong institutions).
In due consideration of KPI achievements in research on problems of sustainable development and in education for sustainable development, Rector Mykhailo Zgurovsky, who also serves as the UNESCO Chair in Higher Technical Education, System Analysis and Informatics, was invited to be a member of the SDG 4 Education 2030 High-Level Steering Committee in 2016-2018 within the regional Group II (UNESCO electoral Eastern European States).
KPI is the only university that has been representing Ukraine’s system of higher education in the United Nations Academic Impact initiative (UNAI) since 2011.
Activities of the Secretariat of Nobel Sustainability Trust at KPI since 2017 testify to the high international prestige of the university in the area of teaching and research in sustainable development. Borys Paton, the late President of NASU, and KPI Rector Mykhailo Zgurovsky were at the head of the Secretariat.