The disruptive force of the COVID-19 pandemic is lessening in power and plans are being made for the postcrisis period, among which increasing the sustainability of higher education is of significant importance. The study aims at establishing students’ existing environment-related routines during their home confinement, as a basis for applying green measures to campus living once academic life is resumed with the physical presence of students. The collected data rely on self-reported information provided by 816 students from Politehnica University of Timisoara (Romania), collected via an online, anonymous survey. The novelty of the approach is that household environment-related routines are investigated during a crisis period, with the possibility to build upon the results to implement tailored measures to encourage or diminish environmentally relevant consumption by young, highly skilled individuals. The students display a moderate awareness of environmental issues and indicate consumption routines that may be steered towards an increased sustainability-conscious campus life, through the combined intervention of the university, city administration, and stakeholder involvement. The findings are used to explore the possible directions for action towards increasing or contributing to the territorial sustainability in the socio-ecological context of Timisoara, the largest university city in the western part of Romania via educational, managerial and policy interventions.

This paper aims to diagnose Romanian engineering students in relation to their migration intentions, motivations, and destinations, and to predict the magnitude of migration in the polled population. It presents the results of a quantitative study based on a questionnaire survey consistent in terms of number and structure of variables and responses. The online questionnaire was self-administered by 1782 students from the five major technical Romanian universities, which are the main providers of the highly skilled labor force in the area of engineering. Regression analysis was carried out to correlate the drivers of migration and the potential for real migration. According to the results, Romanian students from technical universities are inclined to migrate in a significant proportion; the economic factor being the main migration driver. The predictive model built on the logistical regression and the collected data accounts only partially for the variations of the variable decision to migrate, so further research is needed. The analysis of the students’ mindset can prove useful to understand the future interactions between the new graduates and the labor market, to develop regional and national policies regarding human capital, and to root development plans towards sustainable economic growth in solid databases concerning the engineering profession.

The response of most educational institutions to the health crisis triggered by the COVID-19 pandemic was the adoption of emergency remote teaching and assessment. The paper aims to evaluate students’ satisfaction with assessment activities in a Romanian university and to identify elements pertaining to sustainable assessment in the post-pandemic period. A collaborative research strategy was developed with students being invited as co-researchers for data collection by distributing an online questionnaire and for interpretation of the results in a focus group. The factor analysis of the responses to the survey extracted two pillars pertaining to students’ appraisal of remote assessment activities: Knowledge, and leisure and stress. The discussion in the focus group showed that the research helped participants to process and reason their experience with remote assessment activities in the summer of 2020. Students missed their academic rituals and interactions with peers and teachers. Despite their enthusiasm for technological innovation and the benefits brought by computer assisted assessment, students are inclined towards preserving human evaluators, preferably from their familiar teachers, in educational settings resembling pre-pandemic academic life. A sustainable, resilient model of education needs to be based on retaining features identified as acceptable by students as examinees.

Communication during an ongoing crisis is a challenging task that becomes even more demanding during a public health crisis. Early in the start of the pandemic, global leaders called upon the public to reject infodemics and access official sources. This article focuses on the communicative aspects of health services management, with a particular focus on the communication strategy of the Romanian district public health authorities during the COVID-19 lockdown, as seen on official websites and social networks. The 15 most affected districts were selected, according to the officially reported health cases. The issued press releases and the posts on Facebook pages show an uneven experience on the part of district authorities in dealing with public information campaigns. In addition, the results of the study indicate a lack of sustainable communication approaches as well as the need of professional training and strategy in dealing with the public health crisis. From a communication point of view, a strategic approach on behalf of the public health sector is crucial to enhance the preparedness of appropriate institutions to act during emergencies and to respond to the needs of the media and the public with timely, correct, and meaningful information.

Heavy metal pollution, manifested by the accumulation, toxicity and persistence in soil, water, air, and living organisms, is a major environmental problem that requires energetic resolution. Mining tailing areas contain metal minerals such as Cu, Zn, Pb, Cr and Cd in high concentrations that pollute the environment and pose threats to human health. Phytoremediation represents a sustainable, long-term, and relatively inexpensive strategy, thus proving to be convenient for stabilizing and improving the environment in former heavy metal-polluted mining sites. This study presents the bioremediation potential of Silphium perfoliatum L. plants, in the vegetative stages of leaf rosette formation, grown on soil polluted with heavy metals from mining dumps in Moldova-Noua, in the Western part of Romania. The bioaccumulation factor (BAF), translocation factor (TF), metal uptake (MU) and removal efficiency (RE) of Cu, Zn, Cr and Pb by S. perfoliatum plants were determined in a potted experiment in controlled environmental conditions. The reference quantities of heavy metals have been determined in the studied soil sample. The experiment followed the dynamics of the translocation and accumulation of heavy metals in the soil, in the various organs of the silphium plants, during the formation of the leaf rosette (13-18 BBCH). The determination of the amount of heavy metals in soil and plants was achieved by the method of digestion with hydrochloric and nitric acid 3/1 (v/v) quantified by atomic absorption spectroscopy (AAS). The obtained experimental results demonstrate that the substrate has a high heavy metal content being at the alert threshold for Zn (260.01 mg kg-1 in substrate compared with alert threshold 300 mg kg-1) and at intervention thresholds for other metals (Cu -234.66 mg kg-1/200 mg kg-1; 299.08 mg kg-1/300 mg kg-1 and Pb-175.18 mg kg-1/100 mg kg-1). The average concentration of the metals determined in dynamics in the dry biomass of plants varied between roots, petioles, and laminas. The root is the main accumulator for Cu and Cr (Cu – 37.32 mg kg-1 -13 BBCH to 43.89 mg kg-1-15 BBCH and 80.71 mg kg-1 – 18 BBCH; Cr – 57.43 mg kg-1 – 13 BBCH to 93.36 mg kg-1 -18 BBCH), and for Zn and Pb the lamina seems to carry the same function. Preliminary results show that Silphium perfoliatum may be a viable alternative in the bioremediation and treatment of heavy metal-contaminated area.

The study reports on research carried out at the five major technical higher institutions in Romania. It views the human values students bring with them to the educational setting as rhizomatic lines, in the Deleuzian sense, and aims at identifying the intensity of each value, respectively, at grasping the correlations between the students’ values and their projection concerning postgraduation life, including nomadic (i.e., migration) intentions. Such an approach is novel in educational research. The 1782 valid responses collected after applying an online questionnaire were subjected to multivariate statistical analyses. The results unfold the research stages, from intensity-identification concerning the 18 values included in the questionnaire to the factor extraction and correlation findings that highlight strata beneath the upper layer of responses. The values boil down to three nodes of the rhizome, anchoring the Romanian engineers-to-be in the present setting and allowing them to grow in a sustainable manner, i.e., to become professionals, socially accepted, and belonging to a group. The findings are useful to professors, who need to constantly check their assumptions about the profile of the young generation, to better ground their partnership relation with students in moral realities that are relevant and help learners face disruption, crisis, incertitude.

In 2018, the United Nations Volunteers organization recognized that the governmental support for volunteering is a superior public management practice, offering the much-needed fuel for the integration of volunteering in politics, law-making, and social planning at the government level. The present article analyzes the current situation of governmental support for volunteering at federal, regional, and local levels of public administration in the Russian Federation as a precondition for making coproduction of public services possible. The analysis is based on the scrutiny of documents, a questionnaire survey of Russian volunteers, and an expert poll of public servants and nonprofit organizations (NPO) leaders. The analysis of the state policy of support for volunteering is carried out with respect to the following parameters: the awareness and evaluation of national measures of the governmental support for volunteering, as well as the evaluation of informational, financial, consulting, and organizational measures to support volunteer organizations by regional and municipal civil servants. In a country such as the Russian Federation, where volunteering is a relatively young social phenomenon, public administration needs not only to provide support, but also to administer transformation processes toward sustainable development, relying on the partnership and resources volunteers bring for effectively managing public life.

The availability and accessibility of green spaces in urban settings are important factors in determining the sustainability of cities and the quality of urban life. However, the literature indicates a need for evidence-based data correlating green areas and perceived well-being in the city. This study focuses on a vignette study of the satisfaction with green spaces in a Romanian small urban setting that meets the standards of green space availability and accessibility proposed by the World Health Organization. The data obtained by applying a questionnaire to a sample of 600 residents highlight the appreciation of the local people for the characteristics, functions, and availability of urban green spaces. The study establishes statistically significant correlations between the general satisfaction with life and the distance in meters to the nearest park, between the general satisfaction with life and the distance in time to the nearest park, and between the distance in meters and the time spent in parks and green spaces. The results can be used to establish a participatory agenda for local authorities interested in gaining insight from residents for the future actions needed to develop green spaces and to provide them with the opportunity to reflect upon the correlations between outdoor activities in such spaces and people’s well-being in urban settings.