Eutopia updates (26.11.2019)

Consortium-related news

In September, the EUTOPIA board agreed to participate as a test-case in the ‘EuniQ’-project. This project aims to develop a comprehensive quality assessment framework to evaluate European Universities. The project is financed by the European Commission and was initiated by the Flemish Community.

End of October, EUniQ organized a workshop for all selected European alliances to discuss the draft assessment framework that will now be tested in pilot reviews of the 4 test-case alliances (YUFE, UNITE!, UNA and EUTOPIA). EUTOPIA will be evaluated by the Slovenian and Latvian Quality Assurance Agencies (SQAA & AiC), probably in June 2020. Katja Žibert Kamšek (UL) and Steven Van Luchene (VUB) represented EUTOPIA .

The University of Cergy-Pontoise has officially become CY Cergy Paris University, result of the UCP, the EISTI (engineering), the EPSS (social work) and the ILEPS (sport) brought closer together. CY Cergy Paris University keeps an important link with the other schools from the Université Paris Seine and especially with the ESSEC Business School.

On the 7^thof November, the European Commission organized an event in Brussels with representatives from all 17 selected European University alliances. All EUTOPIA Presidents attended this event with student representatives. Please find attached the agenda for the morning and through this link the agenda for the afternoon.

On the 8^th of November, the European Commission organized a management presentation on administrative procedure in the European Universities. Matjaz Krajnc, Tsaja Nabergoj and Nikki Muckle assisted to this meeting as EUTOPIA representatives. the meeting discussed financial, contractual and reporting details, and how the 17 alliances will work with each other. Details of the financial and contractual issues will be presented by Ljubljana at the alliance meeting in January.

EUTOPIA gives birth to a sextuplet.
- During a skype meeting on last Tuesday November 19^th, the members of WP2 Education identified the first learning units that will get a EUTOPIA label. Each of the 6 partner universities suggested a component of its present curriculum and will assume the responsibility for developing this learning unit into an interinstitutional learning community involving teaching staff, students and extra academic stakeholders of all EUTOPIA universities. The selection of learning units perfectly illustrates the EUTOPIA characteristics of challenge based and science driven learning. Moreover, the first topics respond to the needs of society as they include European governance, Sustainability, Multilingualism and diversity, Cognitive science, Data science and Business development for innovative technology. We are especially proud to say that the colleagues involved are highly respected not only for their pedagogical approach but also for their contribution to research and innovation in our partner universities. WP2 therefore aims to cooperate with the other WPs for making these learning units the spill of learning and knowledge communities at a European scale.

In order to prepare for the official start of the project in December, representatives from the EUTOPIA partners met to discuss the key actions of the WP7.1 Sustainability on the 20^thof November. The different sub work package actions were discussed, especially the Quality Board, the Business model and other related questions. A template for the information needed from each partner will be sent next week to all WP7.1 contact persons.

On November 4th and 5th, Warwick and UPF met in Barcelona to review and update the deliverables of theWP4Place-making in order to prepare the kick-off meeting of the package. They agreed that the meeting of all the partners (WP4 leads) to revise jointly the work-to-do in detail would take place in the first Eutopia Week next January.

On 12^th- 14^thNovember, a delegation from CY Cergy Paris University visited the University of Warwick for a jointly organised workshop titled; “Heritage, memory and creation: conflicting truths and engagement”. Conclusions and pictures of this workshop can be found through this link.

This a kind reminder for Warwick’s new visiting fellowship scheme: Fernandes Fellowships.These Fellowships will allow those in research, tenure-track or early academic positions to undertake a three-month visit to Warwick (possibly split over two or three visits) in order to develop long-term research collaborations. Applications can be submitted at any time and will be reviewed on a monthly basis until funds are fullyallocated. If you, or other colleagues, have questions about this scheme, please contact Mike Haymes (m.haymes@warwick.ac.uk) at Warwick.

This is a kind reminder for the International conference “Braintumors: From bench to clinic”which will be held on the 26th of November 2019 in Ljubljana, Slovenia. The conference is organized by the Medical Center of Molecular Biology, Institute of Biochemistry, Faculty of Medicine, University of Ljubljana and the National Institute of Biology and in the scope of the Interreg TRANS-GLIOMA“New glioblastoma therapiesvia a translational cross border research platform” project. Passive registration is still possible until November 25 through this link.