22 January 2025
We are delighted to announce a 4EU+ 1CORE Workshop for Alliances: Sharing Best Practices to Enhance Governance Models, an engaging event aimed at advancing governance processes within European University alliances. Organised in the framework of the 1CORE project which focuses on enhancing governance structures and fostering collaboration across member universities and external stakeholders.
The event will showcase the results of an internal governance review conducted by 4EU+, benchmarked against other European University alliances. Attendees will gain insights into best practices, innovative governance strategies, and recommendations to enhance governance structures.
Date: 22 January 2025
Time: 9:00 – 13:00
Location: 4EU+ Brussels Office (Avenue des Arts 56) or online
Registration for onsite participation is open until 17 January 2025 (subject to confirmation)
Registration for online participation is open until 20 January 2025
This workshop will also be an opportunity to welcome alliance representatives to the new 4EU+ office in Brussels. In-person registration is now open but is subject to confirmation due to capacity constraints. For more information, please contact Laura Colo, laura.colo@4euplus.eu.
9:00 - 9:30
Registration
9:30 - 10:00
Opening session
Keynote address & presentation of recommendations
Elena Del Giorgio, 4EU+ Senior Policy Officer & Interim Secretary General
Title: 1CORE: Improving the 4EU+ Governance Model - Consultation Processes and Macro-Recommendations
Overview of the methodology, consultations, and key recommendations.
Followed by a Q&A session
10:00 - 11:30
Sharing best practices
Presentations by alliances on innovative governance strategies
After five years of the launch of the European Universities initiative, in the FOREU subgroups, we have seen the evolution of the governance in the alliances, and the implementation of legal status in some of them, with its advantages and inconveniences. There are many communalities in the Governance models, but also differences to adapt better to each European University's mission and vision. Integration with partners' Governance vs autonomy of decision making, European Universities funding models and internal alliance equity considering national co-funding systems are other important topics related to Governance of the alliances.
A common challenge for European Universities alliances remains sustainability and organizational resilience. This challenge is further compounded for those alliances who have formally distinguished between the governance of the alliance and the governance of projects. Concrete measures can help to facilitate institutional memory and promote continuity in alliance-level governance. In the case of Una Europa, one such measure has been to hire staff specifically dedicated to governance. These staff members assume responsibility for coordinating the deliberations and decisions of different alliance-level governance bodies. As our collaboration continues to evolve, and as the processes for facilitating decision-making become more complex in light of the engagement of an increasing number of actors across the leadership of our partner universities, the value of dedicating sufficient resources to support and inform appropriate deliberations becomes increasingly clear.
Effective governance models are even more important for alliances composed of universities where transnational cooperation is not so embedded into their institutional traditions. INGENIUM is a highly diverse alliance that brings together higher education institutions of various kinds: comprehensive, applied sciences, technological, and even medical universities. This diversity is our biggest strenght, but is also presents challenges that should be addressed with the right governance arrangements. INGENIUM has a combination of working and decision making structures that are designed to facilitate smooth processes and ensure a transversal involvement of the partners´ leadership structures. Two years down the line, this workshop (and the midterm review process happening in parallel) provides with a great opportunity to take stock of the implementation, learn from other alliances, and reflect on potential improvements.
The presentation “Fostering Transparency and Engagement” provides an overview and a reflection on EPICUR’s governance structure and the integration of its two key consultative bodies, the Student Board & the Early Career Researcher’s Board. After a short introduction to EPICUR’s governance model and its key principles, the presentation will show the important roles of the EPICUR Student Board in the alliance as well as its main achievements and the way the Student Board organizes itself. The presentation will also provide the example of the ECR Board and how it took inspiration from the Student Board’s organisation while choosing slightly different ways to organize according to their respective needs. Finally, the presentation will reflect on challenges that both boards have been facing to create a space for discussion with the representatives of other alliances to stimulate common reflection on similar challenges.
This presentation shows how the associated partners of the SEA-EU Alliance are engaged. SEA-EU is a geographically-balanced and enlarged university alliance with a coastal and marine-maritime character as its hallmark. Given that definition, the city halls and the ports where the Universities are located were invited to join as associated partners. The governance structure of the alliance includes the participation of them as three different bodies: cities, ports and stakeholders. In this last group, companies, NGOs and research centres are included. These bodies have two main features: they are self-managed and they have participation in the governing board of the alliance. Their active participation during the governing week of the alliance provides us with their feedback by reporting the joint activities performed. Some examples of their involvement include: participation in European research proposals, development of microcredentials, co-creation process of the joint programmes or the organization of social activities. The main challenges found are: there is not always a clear definition of their tasks and, for some of them, continuous monitoring is needed to assure their engagement. However, it is expected that along with the implementation of the joint programmes they will be naturally attracted to the new talents emerging from these degrees.
11:30 - 11:45
Coffee break
11:45 - 12:30
Interactive session: collaborative discussions
Participants will engage in facilitated group discussions, focusing on:
Ensuring continuity and institutional memory.
Improving communication and transparency.
Enhancing collaboration and engagement.
12:30 - 13:00
Wrap-up
Reporting and idea sharing: Each group will share key takeaways and suggestions with the broader audience, fostering collective learning.
Closing words
Elena is Senior Policy Officer & Interim Secretary General of the 4EU+ Alliance. She has previously served as Policy Officer at the University of Milan supporting the university’s institutional European and international partnerships and being involved in 4EU+ since from its creation. She holds a PhD in Political and Social Sciences from the European University Institute and has worked as research fellow in the framework of several EU projects such as FP7 - STAGES – Structural Transformation to Achieve Gender Equality in Science (University of Milan) and QUING – Quality in Gender+Equality Policies (Complutense University of Madrid).
Meritxell Chaves is the Secretary General of European University of CHARM-EU since the start of the initiative in 2019. She has more than thirty years of experience in the higher education sector, in four universities of the Catalan university system, in different functional areas of the University such as academic management, strategic planning, quality and accreditation, and international relations in different organisational cultures. She has been the chair of the FOR-EU1/3 subgroup of Governance and Legal Entity from the beginning.
Andrew Whitehead is the Senior Governance Officer for Una Europa vzw. He is responsible for developing and overseeing the organization of alliance-level governance. He has worked in Higher Education for more than two decades. He holds a doctorate in Philosophy and served as a Professor of Philosophy for ten years. He has also been the president or co-director for several international research organizations. In his free time Andrew continues to serve as a Visiting Professor of Philosophy in Belgium where he delivers courses, supervises graduate researchers, and undertakes research.
Juan is the strategic manager of the INGENIUM European Universities alliance, led by the University of Oviedo in northern Spain. Before joining the alliance he worked in the policy team of the higher education unit of the European Commission, with a focus on the joint European degree and quality assurance. Juan was also president of Erasmus Student Network international and ESN Spain, where he was responsible for the overall policy and advocacy coordination of the organisations. Juan led the involvement of ESN in the European Universities initiative, and collaborated with several alliances as associate partner. He has a law degree and a master's in European and international law.
Since February 2020, Daniel Fouchard works as Strategic Advisor for the EPICUR Alliance on behalf of the University of Strasbourg. Within EPICUR, he is in charge of the management of EPICUR’s four thematical committees as well as stakeholder management, cooperating closely with EPICUR’s Student Board, Early Career Researcher Board as well as its external associated partners.
Daniel Fouchard graduated in Political Science (double Master’s degree), specialized in Euro-Mediterranean project management & decentralized cooperation, from the University of Freiburg and the Institut d’études politiques d’Aix-en-Provence in 2019. During his studies, he gained several internship experiences at the North Africa Morocco Office of the Heinrich Böll Foundation (Rabat), the European Parliament as well as at the German Corporation for International Cooperation (GIZ) in Tunisia.
Fernando Perez-Peña is the General Director for European Projects and the SEA-EU General Director. He holds a MEng degree in Telecommunications from the University of Seville and a PhD degree (specialized in neuromorphic motor control) from the University of Cadiz. He has been a postdoc at Bielefeld Universität and ETH Zurich. He has served as advisors for 4 doctoral theses focused on neuromorphic systems. He is an Associate Professor in the University of Cadiz since 2019 (Computer Architecture and Technology Area). He has served before as Deputy Director for Academic Affairs and Bachelor Coordinator of the School of Engineering for four years each position.
Laura Colò is the Project Manager for the 4EU+ Alliance, a coalition of eight prestigious European universities committed to fostering innovation in education, research, and social impact. She leads the 1CORE initiative, which focuses on deepening integration among member institutions and enhancing transnational collaboration.
Before, Laura co-coordinated the ED-AFFICHE project, which involved six European university alliances, 51 institutions, ministries, quality assurance agencies, students, and employers. This project contributed directly to the European Commission's blueprint for the European Degree, offering practical recommendations to facilitate cross-border academic recognition and mobility.
Before joining 4EU+, Laura collaborated with the UNICA Network, connecting universities in European capitals.