Categories
Video

How to Become a 21st-Century University

Play Video

I think it's politically and economically relevant,
I want my university to play a full part in that future.

Séan Hand, deputy pro-vice-chancellor (Europe), University of Warwick Tweet

This is the beginning of a great journey.

Emmanuel Macron’s idea and the EU programme for cross-border university alliances has set the frame for an ambitious project: the documentary ‘United Universities of Europe.’

 

A journalistic journey to the most innovative universities on our continent was quickly planned. The people who work to make these networks function are a highly motivated breed. What drives them? How can students and lecturers participate? How do the universities collaborate with each other, with municipalities, with industry, with research? What does new course design, intelligent mobility schemes, or models for the European Higher Education as a whole look like?

 


The generous invitation of Séan Hand at the University of Warwick in Great Britain, the hospitality of Ludovic Thilly at the University of Poitiers in France and the passionate conversation with Anne-Laure Cadji at the UCLouvain in Belgium were the start.

 

The website www.universitiesunited.eu is the logbook of this project. We want to portrait the plans and projects of the university alliances and what they actually manage to put in place. Now we are looking for project partners, sponsors and creative collaborators to make this documentary happen.

 

If you are interested to participate – please get in touch to schedule a first online conversation at contact@universitiesunited.eu!

 

Project director
Tino Brömme, February 2020

Categories
News

Views from the frontline of the European University project

Seventeen pan-European higher education alliances focused on working with industry, community and embracing alternative education models are benefiting from EU funding which comes on stream this month. What could they achieve?
ECIU students working on the concept of the European university of 2040 ©ECIU University

“We are all very optimistic about it. We see it as a great opportunity to create a truly European university model,” says Seán Hand, deputy pro-vice-chancellor of the University of Warwick in the UK.

He is enthusing over a newly forged bond with partner universities in Brussels, Barcelona, Gothenburg, Paris, and Ljubljana.

The alliance, called EUTOPIA, is one of 17 others supported by the EU – each European University alliance receives €5 million in the first three years and will work to become models of European integration: “inter-university campuses” around which students, doctoral candidates, staff and researchers can move seamlessly.

“We would have pursued many of the planned cooperative projects anyway,” explains Luke Walton, international press manager at Warwick. “But the EU call has encouraged us even more to further enhance our focus on Europe as a key part of our internationalisation strategy.

“It offers a framework, some funding and a public platform to put a sustainable collaboration in place.”

Bartosz Brozek in Kraków is driven by the same pioneering spirit. As vice-dean for international relations, he manages the Jagiellonian University’s projects within the seven-member group UNA Europa.

“The EU money is not even essential,” he stresses. “All of us are committed to working together as one future university. And we are starting by creating a common identity.”

The origins

The enthusiasm for the ‘European Universities Initiative’, launched by the European Commission in late 2018, was huge from the very beginning. A thousand participants, internationalisation officers, vice-rectors, ministerial delegates and representatives of research organisations, joined the information session in Brussels before Christmas either in person or via a video link.

Signatories of the EUTOPIA alliance © EUTOPIA

Over 300 institutions from 31 countries — that is one in 10 of the approximately 3,000 universities in the European Union — had formed 54 networks and submitted their proposals by February. Eventually 17, comprising 114 institutes, were selected in June.

The European Universities project, first pronounced in autumn 2017 by the newly elected French President Emmanuel Macron in his Sorbonne speech, has been hailed as nothing less than a “renaissance of the European spirit.”

“He didn’t have a very precise agenda,” recalls François Taddei, who is a counsellor for the 4EU+ alliance of six partner universities — Charles, Heidelberg and Sorbonne Universities, and the Universities of Copenhagen, Milan and Warsaw.

“But he is someone who deeply believes in Europe and in education, and who believes that universities are the place where discussions can be happening. He was clever enough not to over-prescribe, feeling that there was an interesting potential there.”

The idea originated, according to education journalist Jan-Martin Wiarda, in the European department of the Elysée Palace, and had to be elaborated by the research ministry. Some in the French government, says Wiarda, claim that Macron’s wife Brigitte Trogneux inspired it.

Twenty French universities will receive €100 million over 10 years

Higher education and research minister Frédérique Vidal said in retrospect: “We already agreed in the election campaign that universities and research institutions will play a central role in reconciling citizens with Europe.”

Making it in the first round

“We lost out in the first round by one point,” explains Ludovic Thilly, professor at the University of Poitiers and Executive Vice-Rector in charge of European affairs. He coordinates the European Campus of City-Universities, or EC2U, with Coïmbra, Iasi, Jena, Pavia, Salamanca, Turku and Poitiers in the boat.

“Our EC2U Alliance was ranked 18th, so that was very frustrating… Fortunately, we got a score of 80/100, i.e. we reached the score of excellence, and thus we are supported by the French government. This will greatly help with preparing the best resubmission.”

The selection was made by an evaluation committee, based on the advice of 26 independent external experts whose names were not made public. Each proposal was assessed by three of them against the five necessary criteria: relevance, geographical balance, quality of the proposal, quality of the cooperation arrangements, sustainability & dissemination.

Thilly, who recently attended an EU information session in Brussels, said the Commission considers funding alliances selected in the first and second round for a three-year period with the possibility to apply for a four-year extension.

After that, they are supposed to be self-sustaining. From 2021, when the Initiative becomes part of the Erasmus+ program, subsidies for four years with the possibility of a three-year extension are under discussion.

Geographic self-portrait of the EC2U Alliance

The financing

“Five million euros for three years per consortium is not very much,” Frank Petrikowski, a policy officer for the German Federal Ministry of Education and Research, BMBF, told ESNA European Higher Education News in Berlin. The first mentioned budget was €30 million, it was raised to €60 million and finally set at €85 million for 17 – instead of 12 – chosen consortia.

He hopes that the European Universities will be “a counterweight to Harvard and Stanford”

“It is planned to go even further to €120 million in the second round,” he reveals. “€1.3 billion has been earmarked as a separate pillar of the Erasmus+ program in the forthcoming MFF from 2021 to 2027.”

Secondly, some governments are committed to provide additional money. French and German universities scored highest in the first round of the competition, appearing in 16 and 14 successful alliances respectively.

Paris will support “very well evaluated projects” with a focus on “research and innovation” as well as “other activities which are not eligible for European funding on national territory.” Twenty French universities will receive €100 million over 10 years. Among them are four universities; the above-mentioned University of Poitiers, as well as Orléans, Troyes, and Lille — whose alliances were unsuccessful in the first round.

The Germans have set up a national support programme of €7 million over three years; this also includes universities that didn’t win the first bid and might even not win the second, but that scored high in the Commission’s evaluation.

Rattling the rankings

Harald Kainz, rector of the Technical University of Graz, which is a member of the university alliance ARQUS, hopes that the European Universities will be “a counterweight to Harvard and Stanford.”

Patrick Aebischer, former President of the École polytechnique fédérale de Lausanne (EPFL), went even further, saying at a conference in Munich that the Initiative should focus on a few top universities in order to create a European Ivy League after the American model.

Olga Wessels, Head of the Brussels’ Office of the ECIU University — the biggest of the alliances with now 14 member universities — makes no bones about it: “Especially after Brexit when the UK is leaving the EU, if you look at the rankings, there are not many highly ranked European universities. So we need to build competitiveness of the universities.”

So far, the advantage of internationally high ranking European universities is marginal. Among the 114 alliance members successful in the first round of the programme, only 18 are in the top 200 of the Shanghai ranking, 25 in the QS ranking and 26 in the Times Higher Education ranking.

Can the incentives for merging ever be big enough for a university to give up its autonomy? Or, under what conditions would international ranking companies consider a European University one institution? Phil Baty, editor of the THE World University Rankings, told ESNA: “It is very unlikely that we would treat such a consortium or alliance as a single entity—we tend to look at the legal entity when considering how to rank organisations.”

Kinds of innovation

The call’s specifications were patched together by the EU agency EACEA in a consultation process with the higher education and research sector. Unsurprisingly, they bear the mark of research-intensive universities with strong industry relations in need of ‘innovation’, ‘excellence’ and ‘entrepreneurship.’

An interesting plan of YUFE is furnishing special homes where students can live for free during their stay

The networks have been given catchy names such as EUTOPIA for European Universities Transforming to an Open, Inclusive Academy for 2050, or EDUC, short for European Digital UniverCity, or UNITE! as an acronym of University Network for Innovation, Technology and Engineering.

ECIU University, the European Consortium of Innovative Universities, is less catchy but interesting for its statement that it “is determined to change the way of delivering education from degree-based to challenge-based”.

Beyond the compelling names, there are many pedagogically interesting projects, of network-building experiments and of activities that involve students, citizens and local companies.

One is a multi-campus joint master’s course of the alliance CIVICA. The course forms “European knowledge-creating teams” which concentrate on four research topics.

The alliance with members from France, Germany, Hungary, Italy, Romania and Sweden, including the private business school Hertie School of Governance in Berlin, also organises a trans-European arts and sports tournament.

CharmEU includes the University of Barcelona and Montpellier, Utrecht and Eötvös Loránd University and Trinity College Dublin; they are not the only alliance planning multilingual courses and language-learning support for the participating students. But they are particularly ambitious in exploring exemplary collaboration models—a joint-governance model, guidelines for joint degrees and an open science agenda.

Daniela Trani, Director of the YUFE Alliance © ESNA

Alternative education

The above-mentioned ECIU alliance wants to experiment with alternative educational formats, offer micro-courses, micro-credits, a “competence passport”, and organise “pop-up labs.” These approaches point at diverse learning paths, where students participate in composing their curricula, and skills can be recognised across borders.

The alliance YUFE of eight “young universities” is interesting for its associated partners — the NGO Kiron that builds an online learning platform for refugees, the Adecco staffing agency, the testing organisation ETS Global, and a European association of small and medium-sized enterprises.

An interesting plan of YUFE is furnishing special homes where students can live for free during their stay and in close proximity with local residents.

EC2U, hoping to be successful in the second round, also puts emphasis on community connections. “Our ambition,” says Thilly, “is to deepen the connection with the local communities of the cities we are rooted in.

“We want to involve the municipalities and citizens into the university life, for instance through open conferences, workshops and summer schools.”

Coïmbra and Poitiers have already started by linking their students’ music and arts festivals and by setting up support schemes for young student artists aimed at improving their professional integration.

 

This article was first published in The Pie News, on November 15, 2019

Categories
Podcast

European Universities Unite – Olga Wessels

Olga Wessels
Olga Wessels

Just as the European Commission had announced the results of the ‘European Universities Initiative’ in June 2019, we talked with Olga Wessels, who is a delegate of the European Consortium of Innovative Universities, or ECIU, in Brussels. The ECIU is one of the largest university alliances awarded funding via the initiative.

 

Mrs Wessels, what is ECIU?

The ECIU already exists for over 20 years, we started in 1997. It’s an alliance of fourteen universities today. They are all universities with strong links to their region, and that’s really in their DNA, innovation is in their DNA, and I think that’s what makes the ECIU a very special consortium of young and entrepreneurial universities.

What are the core aims of the ECIU alliance?

Back in 1997, it was not very done, to say that you work together as a university with businesses and industry. Back then, they were really pioneering entrepreneurship. Students can work on real life challenges and share best practices but also failures, so they can learn from each other. You ask industry, or the government, or societal organisations for a real life challenge, and then they ask students in a group to work on this real life challenge, to come up with a solution based on the knowledge that they achieved during their studies. We really believe that the future of universities is challenge-based universities, it’s strong European collaboration.

Moving on now to talk about the European Universities Initiative, what made Macron come up with this idea and why did the EU and the EC decide to get on board with Macron’s idea?

It was the famous Sorbonne speech by Macron where we first learned about the European University concept and, in this speech, he gave his vision for Europe. And what you see, if you look at today’s universities in Europe, especially after Brexit when the UK is leaving the EU, if you look at the rankings, there are not many highly ranked European universities in these rankings. So we need to build competitiveness of the universities, and how to do this, well, why not make them work together so they can learn and build their expertise?

So I believe that initiated the idea of Macron, and then a few months later, there was the Gothenburg summit with all the heads of government and, there, the heads of government agreed that the idea of a European University, the idea of Macron was a very good idea, and they asked the European Commission to implement this, and in the following months, the Commission was in touch with Member States and with stakeholders to make this abstract idea of European Universities a real call under the Erasmus+ programme.

The ECIU alliance was one of those chosen to receive a share of the €85 million funding. Being the largest university alliance involved in the initiative, how much money will be available to your network?

It is €5 million and it doesn’t matter if you are an alliance of 6 universities or an alliance of 14. For us it will be spread out quite thinly, but for us, to apply with a smaller alliance and exclude some of our members that have been with us for 20 years now just would not make sense. The downside, indeed, is that we have to put more of our own funds in, to make this a reality. So all universities need to co-fund. We also ask the national ministries to have some co-funding available.

What are the ECIU’s plans now that you know you have been awarded funding?

We have three years to set up a European University. The first important milestone for us is November, because then we will launch our ECIU University, and then the next year we will accept the very first challenges from society, which our very first students can work on. We will start with very small micro-challenges, and we will slowly build this in the coming years to hopefully in the future have whole study degrees and semester where students can work on really big challenges.

Finally, how can universities and, in particular, students benefit from a European University?

That is a very important question. I truly believe that international experience is very good for students. They learn entrepreneurship, creativity, self-confidence from studying abroad, learning about different cultures, and meeting new people from different nationalities.

Moreover, I think that our universities can learn a lot from each other. For example, the University of Twente has very strong study programmes but it can be that they are missing one type of expertise that Barcelona offers. So why not work closely together and join education in a big platform where students can pick and choose the courses that they really want to do. So, what we offer is more flexibility, more freedom to choose whatever they student wants, and big challenges they can work on.

George Oliver spoke with Olga Wessels via Skype on June 28, 2019 © ESNA

Categories
Uncategorized

SLANCIO

Die Flughafengesellschaft von Venedig SAVE hatte den internationalen Wettbewerb zur Realisierung eines Kunstwerks für den Außenbereich des Flughafens 2012 ausgeschrieben.
Aus den zahlreichen Teilnehmern an der ersten Phase des Wettbewerbs 2013 wurden von der Kommission zehn Finalisten ausgewählt, darunter Künstler und Architekten wie Giacomo Tringali und Massimo Mazzone, Ogata Yoshinobu, Riccardo Cordero, Giancarlo Marchese, Claudio Capotondi, Vittorio Gentile, Sergio Capellini, Arturo Vittori e Andrea Voegler, Antonio Follina, Antonio Caselli. Diese wurden in der zweiten Phase eingeladen, ein Projekt zu erarbeiten und ein Modell herzustellen.


Gewinner wurde die Gruppe TRINAGLI–MAZZONE
 mit dem Projekt „Slancio“.
„Slancio“ – zu Deutsch Schwung, Anlauf – befasst sich mit der historischen Sonderstellung Venedigs und mit dem Fliegen. Die Form des Werkes – eine „konstruierte Skulptur“, nicht modelliert und auch nicht in Stein gehauen – setzt die Lehre der großen italienischen Metallskulptur fort, wie sie Carrino, Lo Savio, Burri, Legnaghi und Minoli vertreten. Es fügt sich in den funktionalen architektonischen Raum ein und respektiert die Atmosphäre der Lagune.

Die Skulptur

Nicht selten leiden die Werke, von welchen in öffentlichen Wettbewerben
für Kunstwerke gefordert wird, architektonische und städtebauliche Bauten zu „verschönern“, unter den Vorgaben der Ausschreibungen. Meist sollen sich ein gelehrter Hintergrund, ein feierlicher Anlass, eine dekorative Funktion oder Ähnliches manifestieren, das Werk soll symbolische Werte evozieren, identitätsstiftend oder monumental sein. Es handelt sich dabei um vormoderne Konzepte der Bildhauerei, von der sich die moderne Plastik abhebt, indem sie ganz im Gegenteil dazu an der „funktionalen Konstruktion des Ortes“ arbeitet. Wie die Architektur der Moderne gehorcht diese moderne Skulptur einem Prozessualismus und Rationalismus, der sich in der Klarheit der Geometrie widerspiegelt.

Im Fall von „Slancio“ erlaubt die Ausführung des Werkes eine Lesart auf zwei Ebenen: Einerseits erinnert die Skulptur an die Flugbahn eines startenden oder landenden Flugzeugs, sie lässt sich aber auch mit einem Pflug oder einer Rudergabel assoziieren. Sie knüpft damit – als „Erzählung auf symbolischer Ebene“ – sowohl an die landwirtschaftliche Geschichte der Region, als auch an die Schifffahrts- und Industrietradition Venedigs an.

Die Ausschreibung des Wettbewerbs enthielt folgende Forderungen:
Das zu verwirklichende Werk soll eine Skulptur sein, deren Grundelement kreativer Natur im Sinne einer gleichzeitigen Gegenwart von Originalität und objektiver Neuigkeit ist. Der Wettbewerber soll in der konkreten Skulptur den nie erloschenen Geist ausdrücken, der die Grundsteinlegung des Internationalen Flughafens Marco Polo am 29. März 1958 beseelte. Gesegnet von seiner Eminenz Kardinalpatriarch von Venedig* sollte der Flughafen auf den Luftwegen den Ruhm der Schiffe von San Marco und Italiens erneuern. (Der Patriarch von Venedig war am 29. Mai 1958 der zukünftige Papst Johannes XXIII, der Gute Papst.)
Andererseits – ein ebenso wichtiger Gesichtspunkt wie der erste – besteht „Slancio“ aus einem dreieckigen Prisma aus CorTen-Stahl, das eine schraubenförmige Kurve, eine Spirale beschreibt. Das Prisma steigt aus dem Boden hervor, wo sie im Untergrund in einem soliden Fundament aus Beton verankert ist. Der Beton, wenn auch von oben nicht sichtbar, wird von Mikropfählen gestützt, womit er auf das Pfahlfundament verweist, auf dem die Stadt Venedig selbst steht.

Vom Symbolischen zum Esoterischen

Vom verjüngten Befestigungspunkt am Boden steigt die Skulptur erst diagonal, dann eine weite Ellenbogenkurve beschreibend, wie eine Sichel im Himmel, in neun Meter Höhe auf. Die Skulptur korrespondiert mit seiner rostroten Farbe, die aus der Verwendung von CorTen-Stahl Typ A resultiert, harmonisch mit dem Ziegelsteinrot des schönen Flughafengebäudes des Architekten Gian Paolo Mar und wird in den Abendstunden von zwei schmalen Lichtstrahlen illuminiert, die die Schlängellinie des Objekts betonen.
Die Skulptur wurde vollständig in der venezianischen Region hergestellt und zwar von der Firma Tecnostrutture in Noventa di Piave mit langjähriger Erfahrung in Stahl- und Betonbau.

Die Autoren

Das Siegerteam besteht aus dem Bildhauer Giacomo Trinagli (auch Gewinner des öffentlichen Wettbewerbs um die Bibliothek von Cles in Trento)

und Massimo Mazzone (Autor von „Nuvola Rossa“, „EUR Floating Space“ und „Piazza Project“ in Eindhoven, Niederlande, mit Massimiliano Fuksas; und Professor für Techniken der Bildhauerei an der Akademie der Schönen Künste Brera, Mailand)

sowie hervorragenden Mitarbeitern wie dem Ingenieur Andrea Imbrenda aus dem Studio Progres Engineering (Gewinner des Excellence in Structural Engineering Award des National Council of Structural Engineers Associations 2014 in den Vereinigten Staaten); dem Architekten Federico Dal Brun, verantwortlich fürs grafische Design; die Architekten von AIR, verantwortlich für die 3D-Modellierung der Skulptur; sowie Osvaldo Tiberti und Michele D’Agostino, zwei junge tüchtige Bildhauer, welche die Modelle der Skulptur verfertigt haben. Weitere Mitarbeiter, die am Project Management, an den Studien zur Patina in Meer- und Industrieumgebung sowie um die Kommunikation mitgewirkt haben: Emiliano Coletta, Antonella Conte, Laura Cazzaniga, Alessandro Zorzetto, Giulia Mazzorin und Barbara Marzoli.

Die Skulptur wird Ende des Jahres 2014 in den vor den Abflugschaltern angelegten Beeten aufgestellt. Am 13. September 2014, 18 Uhr, fand im Studio AIR Architects in Rom, Via Casilina 110, eine Präsentation mit Aperitif statt. Eine weitere Vorstellung des Projektes fand am 14. September im Saroli Club von Castelgandolfo, via Spiaggia del Lago 17, für diejenigen statt, die sich vertiefend über die innovativen technischen Besonderheiten des Werkes informieren wollten.

Categories
Other

Teatro Temporaneo

Architektur, Kunst und öffentlicher Raum —
Die bewohnbaren Skulpturen von Licia Zhenru Liang
(von Matteo Binci)

Sie hat in Sizilien die letzte ihrer bewohnbaren Skulpturen geschaffen, in denen sie die Beziehung zwischen mineralischen und pflanzlichen, tierischen und künstlichen Materialien erkundet.

Die Spiralform ist ein Symbol für Leben und Weiblichkeit. Die Harmonie eines Raumes ohne Brüche, ohne Kanten, mit einem spiralförmigen Verlauf, der den zyklischen Sinn des Lebens hervorhebt.

Teatro Temporaneo #1 ist die jüngste der bewohnbaren Skulpturen der chinesischen Künstlerin Licia Zhenru Liang, die in Militello, im Val di Catania in der Contrada Coscienza (im Südosten Siziliens), entstanden ist. Es befindet sich auf einem Grundstück voller Olivenbäume, das symbolisch in der Nähe des Vulkans Ätna liegt.

Das Werk, an dem Alessandro Sinagra, Davide Andrea Lo Curto, Christian Grifò, Santi Tramontana und Edilforn mitgewirkt haben, ist das erste einer Reihe von Skulpturen, die in verschiedenen Formen – Quadrat, Ellipse und Oval – an anderen Vulkanen und geologisch aktiven Szenarien entstehen werden.

Die Wahl des Backsteins spiegelt die nordeuropäische Tradition wider, die dieses Material als Synonym für den öffentlichen Raum sieht. 

Von der Bewegung der Amsterdamer Schule bis zu den Experimenten von Per Kirkeby, von den Meisterwerken Erwin Heerichs bis zu Tadao Ando stehen Ziegel und Fliesen für die Interaktion zwischen Architektur, Kunst und öffentlichem Raum. 

Ausgehend von dieser Vision entwickelt Liang eine nomadische, dekonstruierbare Version von bewohnbaren Skulpturen mit geringer Umweltbelastung. Diese Skulpturen – die keine Denkmäler sind – sind nur ein vorübergehender Ort für momentane Aktionen.

Mit ihnen untersucht die Künstlerin die Beziehungen zwischen Mineralien und Pflanzen, Tierischem und Künstlichem, die Fruchtbarkeit von Mensch und Erde, die kosmische Energie von Vulkanen und die Lebensfreude von Hunden, die die Installation ebenso bewohnen wie Menschen.

www.facebook.com/people/Licia-Liang/100006878255373