Politecnico joins the first Unite! Dialogue centered on students
“Unite! students: our soul, our core” was the theme of the XI Unite! Dialogue, a particularly rich edition of activities, interactive workshops, work sessions and high-level meetings. The delegation gathered once more with the other partner Universities to progress with all the Alliance activities.
This XI Dialogue, held in Barcelona from 25 to 28 February, was the second organized by Universitat Politècnica de Catalunya (UPC). Unite! student community was the core of the event. SURE! Meetings – gathering the Alliance student network – were enriched by numerous meetings focusing on Unite! study offer and on strategies to involve a growing number of students in the Alliance activities. Special events were also held in plenary sessions including live and online participants, such as the U!Talks, where students debated on innovative teaching, entrepreneurship and the value of taking risks both in the academic world and in the workplace (full video available on Unite! website). The PhD Contest saw doctoral students delivering a compelling research presentation in just 3 minutes. A matchmaking session, “Inspiring Young Technological talent” connected university students with high schoolers in a hybrid format, featuring tech projects with social impact developed by Unite! students.
Unite! governing bodies discussed the future of the Alliance. This following Politecnico’s mission held on 17 February in Frankfurt, where Rector Stefano Corgnati and Professor Roberto Zanino met the Rectors and Presidents of all the Alliance's partner universities, initiating concrete discussions on the Alliance's long-term sustainability. Professor Zanino emphasised that “the essential result of the meeting was that Rectors and Presidents of all partner Universities do not consider Unite! to be a simple Erasmus+ project. They have endorsed the relevance of a holistic vision of the Alliance, where all the missions of the Universities – education, research, innovation and service to society – are carried out and supported by the governance”.
All the Dialogue events were rounded off by the intense sessions of the Unite! communities, which deal with all the Alliance's concrete activities. Ad hoc meetings were dedicated to some of the parallel projects, such as Widening, aUPaEU and IDEM. The traditional poster session allowed different Unite! communities and projects to showcase the advancements in their ongoing activities. UPC, being the host of the event, has renamed one of its campus streets in honour of the Alliance, while placing a plaque on several benches dedicated to each partner University.
During one of the many plenary sessions, the Alliance unveiled its new website, resulting from many years of work and coordination between the strategic communication team and all Unite! governing bodies. The new platform was conceived to enhance the user experience with a structure tailored to different audiences, while showcasing the progress of all Alliance projects, along with training and research catalogues.
Together with the language tandems, which were the occasion for doing some conversation in each Unite! local language, various additional activities were also led by the Alliance's social clubs, such as the Hiking Club, Cooking Club, and Chorus.
Cover picture by Oriol Miralles
