University Social Responsibility Network (USRN)

Universities are increasingly regarded as playing a broader role than fulfilling the responsibility of educating youth and developing knowledge. The rapidly changing environment that universities operate in requires institutions to engage more in contributing to the betterment of society through the integration of social responsibility into institutional management, teaching, research, services and public activities. University Social Responsibility (USR) extends the traditional mission of universities in an endeavour to develop solutions for economic, social, and environmental problems in society. Based on the belief that universities have obligation to work together to address the economic, social, cultural and environmental challenges in the world and to find solutions so as to make our world more just, inclusive, peaceful and sustainable, the University Social Responsibility Network (USRN) was established in 2015, bringing together a group of thought leaders to exchange ideas, resources, practices of varied scope and scale to steer global discussion and development of USR in higher education. The USRN currently has 20 member institutions worldwide, and the Secretariat of the Network is hosted at The Hong Kong Polytechnic University. - Al-Farabi Kazakh National University, Kazakhstan - Ateneo de Manila University, Philipines - Beijing Normal University, China - Clare Hall, University of Cambridge, UK - Kyoto University, Japan - Peking University, China - Rhodes University, South Africa - Sichuan University, China - Simon Fraser University, Canada - The Hong Kong Polytechnic University, Hong Kong SAR (Chair) - The University of Manchester, UK - Tufts University, USA - University of Haifa, Israel - University of Iceland, Iceland - University of New South Wales, Australia - University of Pretoria, South Africa - University of São Paulo, Brazil - Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam, Netherlands - Washington University in St Louis, USA - Yonsei University, South Korea