Shaping the future of European university alliances
The Learning&Teaching Task Force (TF L&T) of the CESAER University Network, whose focus is on European University Initiative, Industrial Doctorate and European Degree/Joint Programs, met for the third time this year at the end of November at PoliTO Hub in Brussels.
PoliTO Professor Roberto Zanino - Rector's Senior Advisor for International University Networks and for the European Alliance Unite! - co-chairs the TF L&T along with Professor Justyna Szostak, Rector's Representative for International Educational Programs at Gdańsk University of Technology, while the role of institutional liaison is held by Mara Baccolla (PoliTO).
The meeting was attended by representatives of several CESAER member universities, including: the Universities of Aalborg, Ghent, Sheffield, Strathclyde and Twente; the Technical Universities of Brno, Budapest, Kyiv and Madrid; and University College Dublin. Several participants from outside TF L&T were also invited, including: Thomas Estermann, Director Governance, Funding and Public Policy Development at EUA; Magdalena Sikorska, Secretary General of the EUNICE Alliance; Sofia d'Aguiar, Executive Director of the EELISA Alliance; and a delegation from DG EAC, European Commission, led by Tine Delva, Deputy Head of Unit Higher Education.
The first part of the meeting was dedicated to discussing governance models for the European University Alliances. After presentations by EUA and the EUNICE Alliance, Professor Zanino outlined the TF's program of activities on these topic, including: in the spring-summer of 2025 there will be a consultation of key stakeholders (Presidents and Rectors of CESAER members involved in Alliances - almost all CESAER members are involved in a total of 15 Alliances, about 25 percent of all existing Alliances at the moment - members of the steering committees of Alliances; students); in the fall of 2025 there will be an event dedicated to the Alliances, as part of the CESAER Annual Meeting to be held at the Brno University of Technology.
The second part of the meeting faced the topic of the European Degree, with contributions from the European Commission and from Ramón Martínez, coordinator of the JEDI project, followed by a brief presentation of the activity initiated by TF L&T on this line, by Professor Szostak.
In the last part of the meeting, the L&T TF addressed the topic of Industrial Doctorate, with an introductory presentation by Professor Laszlo Nyulaszi, Director of the Doctoral School at Budapest University of Technology and Economics. This was followed by a presentation by Professor Zanino of the TF's future program of activities along these lines, which will also build on the work done in the past by CESAER's TF Innovation on the same theme. In particular, there will be an event in late spring 2025 at NTNU in Trondheim, with the involvement of key stakeholders (Maria Sklodowska Unit of the European Commission, Council for Doctoral Education of EUA, companies involved on the doctoral front, KICs, and students).
“It was a pleasure to host at our Brussels hub the third meeting of the L&T TF in 2024,” stated Professor Zanino, “The TF includes very motivated and competent members from all over Europe, and is consequently doing, in my view, not insignificant work on some of the most important fronts in Higher Education today. This work will bear full fruit as part of the events we are organizing for 2025 in various venues. The meeting of the CESAER Board of Directors in late 2025 at our Polytechnic will therefore be an excellent opportunity to pull the strings of all these activities and assess their further prospects.”