A win-win-win for academia, professional development and our mission
Aside from friendships, connections and all the other joys that come with young adult life, what’s the most meaningful thing a student can get from their university experience?
The prudent answer may be a profound combination of professional experience and academic knowledge.
This was the view expressed by two separate groups of students working in collaboration with Vizzuality and the IE School of Global and Public Affairs to take on the mantle of sustainability consultants to complete their capstone projects.
One group — comprised of Bachelor’s students — identified the best social indicators Vizzuality could use to track the interconnection between climate change, biodiversity loss, and inequality.
The other group — comprised of Master’s students — benchmarked sustainability standards and legal frameworks.
I met with both groups to discuss their findings and experience of conducting the research and writing the final collaborative report. Here are some of the main takeaways from these conversations.
From theory to real-life practice
“Doing a capstone gave me more insight and I learned a lot more than I would just writing an investigative paper. This allowed me to learn how a company in this space works, and it gave me a clear trajectory of what I want to do now,” found Marisol, who examined economic development related to inequality and climate change.
Isild and Oriane, research partners on sustainability measurement and reporting standards across the apparel and food industries, agreed. Working with a company and addressing real-life concerns was an ideal opportunity for them.
“On a personal level, I had never done a benchmark on so many questions which of course helped me improve my research skills. But also for my daily life, realizing the complexity and inconsistencies across sustainability guidelines and labels make you think twice. Products may not be as sustainable as it sounds” said Isild.
For Oriane the acquired skills came in handy — very quickly.
Four days after giving her capstone presentation she was already hired by the startup accelerator Unlimited Spain. When her new company was trying to develop sustainable reporting toolkits for SMEs in the US and in Europe, she found her newly-obtained knowledge and research skills in high demand to investigate applicable sustainability reporting laws and standards.
Alexia, who focused her capstone research on gender inequality and climate, also emphasized that working with her research group and with Vizzuality helped her improve her professional communications skills in crucial ways.
“For consultancy work you need very clear and concise communication and this project prepared to do so in a data-driven environment with complex information,” she said.
From confusion to clarity and action
When asked what was most challenging about the projects, students from both groups highlighted the complexity of information and data that is necessary to truly understand and take on a project.
On the one hand, it was the complexity associated with students’ individual research fields that at times made them pause. Balancing the knowledge that no single academic research project could ever encompass all information to provide a truly full picture of any given subject while still striving to produce meaningful research outputs was not easy.
“What stood out for me was the complexity of factors playing a role,” said Andrea, part of the inequality research group. She focused on the interplay of inequality caused by political conflicts and environmental migration, noting that climate change drives a lot of different social events that can reinforce one another.
Alexia pointed out that their group identified many different types of inequality. “Social factors like inequality are very difficult to put a quantitative measure on,” she said. “The amount of work and tools in place necessary to do this kind of work and to communicate is complex, too.”
Vizzuality’s mission to facilitate collaboration within these complexities as well as the company’s outspoken focus on sustainability were the main draws for students to enter into the capstone cooperation. “There’s so much information out there it’s overwhelming. What Vizz is doing is very important to actually put in the effort to try to comprehend it all because others can’t,” said Alexia.
Andrea found hope in learning about how companies’ business and sustainability needs can align, while Maria described measuring and demonstrating visually what is happening to the environment as “a powerful tool to persuade people and companies.”
From collaborators to benefactors
Of course, the students’ inputs also greatly benefited Vizzuality.
The Bachelor students’ work revealed some very important pain points in the research domain, namely the lack of interconnection between social and economic sciences with environmental sciences. They also found common shortcomings of visual platforms and services, such as platforms often being too technical. Vizzuality’s science team and our developers are also sure to take note of the social indicators they determined as useful to track this interconnection between climate change, biodiversity loss, and inequality.
The Master’s students did a great job mapping the sustainability regulation and standards landscape. They provided very useful in-depth insights into the inconsistencies in guidelines and metrics in Europe and North America, the associated challenges and limitations for issuing appropriate sustainability standard recommendations, tradeoffs between complying with environmental standards and social impact, and data complexity.
Naturally, the students’ honest feedback regarding the benefits and also potential improvements on Vizzuality’s side of the process was also very useful as we always strive to make the capstone collaboration for both students and company as enriching as possible. Hopefully, in the end, the biggest benefactors will be our clients and the planet!
We really appreciate the hard work the students put in and are encouraged by their reported overall experiences. We cannot wait to find out where their passions and paths will lead them. We are heartened by Marisol’s words:
“Personally, I am now really driven to work for a company that has a clear mission and is driven to work on sustainability issues, to be part of the solution.”
This article was written by Alexander Wowra following his interviews with the students with edits from Jacinta Hamley and Susana Romao.
