KA2: Cooperation for innovation and the exchange of good practices EUROPEAN UNIVERSITIES Pilot call for proposals: EAC-A03-2018 Deadline: 28 February 2019 (12.00 noon Brussels time) Erasmus+ Programme APPLICATION: DETAILED PROJECT DESCRIPTION (To be attached to the e-Form) EN Version 2018 European Universities Transforming to an Open, Inclusive Academy for 2050 / EUTOPIA Page 1 of 157 PART I. Relevance of the proposal (max.25 points) Please attach the mission statement of your alliance to the e-Form. The mission statement should: - be endorsed by the relevant decision-making bodies in each of the partner institutions - explain what your European University alliance will look like in 2025 - explain the unique and differentiated vision of your alliance, building on the section "What are European Universities" from the 2019 Erasmus+ Programme Guide1 I.1 Relevance of the proposal: Please describe what your European University alliance will look like in 3 years and explain how it will progress towards the long-term vision described in your mission statement (max.1000 words) The proposal will promote practical development of the universities into a distinctive, daring and driven European University alliance: EUTOPIA, that transforms 21st-century education, challenge-based research and place-shaping relevance. EUTOPIA will employ a long-term vision (whose horizon is 2050), a mid-term project and ambition (2025), and a short-term piloting plan (three years) to realize its ambitions. a. Long-term vision The vision is of a fully federated inter-university campus alliance that is: Geared towards the challenges of the future - challenge-driven to prepare students, staff and lifelong learners as custodians and enablers of future-oriented solutions Student-centred and student-empowering - providing transformative and open learning opportunities, and extended horizons of expectation and ability, across Europe and throughout the world Attentive to the plurality, potentiality and international pre-eminence of Europe’s regions - building on place-making strengths, connecting contexts to enhance European capability and creativity, and supporting the international pre-eminence of European talent Committed to the principles of openness and inclusion - fostering knowledge co-creation, building open resources and platforms, endorsing open science agendas, sponsoring access, mobility and inclusivity mechanisms, and liberating intellectual and social potential. These are encapsulated in EUTOPIA’s collective affirmation: EUTOPIA is a challenge-led, student-centred, place-based, inclusive alliance of entrepreneurial, change-focused universities. We are a core group of like-minded universities for whom change is not simply the output from our alliance, but the driving force that brings us together. b. Mid-term project and ambition EUTOPIA will establish by 2025 the foundations of this federated university. This project focuses on five core areas, in order to: 1. prepare students, staff and learners to be empowered European citizens in today’s disruptive world 1 http://ec.europa.eu/programmes/erasmus-plus/resources/programme-guide European Universities Transforming to an Open, Inclusive Academy for 2050 / EUTOPIA Page 2 of 157 2. adjust the university organisation and practices to lead the challenges of the 21st Century 3. increase and intensify the Europeanisation of programmes on offer 4. catalyse place-making by the universities in partnership with their regions, engaging with all agencies to embed and empower the transformative effect of universities 5. serve as an example for other universities, across Europe and in the wider international arena, in order to share and develop the focus on building transformative, challenge-driven and contemporary universities. EUTOPIA has affirmed this project thus: The joint mission of EUTOPIA is to build a distinctive, daring and driven alliance of transformative and engaged institutions. EUTOPIA will produce challenge-driven research and teaching, prepare empowered European graduates, champion regional and international involvement, and support diversity, inclusivity and widening citizenship. A key vector is the binding principle of openness. EUTOPIA will embrace the Open Science agenda, create distinctive and relevant European learning through open knowledge co-creation, build open resource platforms that enable collaboration, and support inclusivity mechanisms that release localised intellectual and social potential. The project and ambition will: Stimulate the European Open Science agenda, relating it to teaching, research and social missions, and radiating to become leaders and advocates in this agenda’s continuation Develop the Open Educational Resources and Knowledge agenda, wherein students co-create courses, distinctive curricula are constructed collaboratively, mobility is a mainstream learning experience, and the limiting practices of traditional approaches are challenged Build an Open Campus agenda, to strengthen links between and across universities and regions, promote a comprehensive cosmopolitan ethos, and champion and empower students as agents of the open campus. This mission will enable inter-institutional learning that will create by 2025 realising conditions for the vision of EUTOPIA. This will include creation of a EUTOPIA learning community, a EUTOPIA knowledge community with actions geared to towards diverse and inclusive participation, and a EUTOPIA outreach and support community connecting with European universities and the world. The result will be a European University model for 21st-century education, research and place-shaping, that strengthens European values and identity, and increases EHEA global competitiveness. c. Short-term piloting plan and activities The piloting plan will initiate the project and ambition that are guided by the vision. The anchored project therefore carries the acronym ‘EUTOPIA 2050’: European Universities Transforming to an Open Inclusive Academy for 2050. EUTOPIA’s expression of the vision sets terms for the piloting plan: ‘Through our intended multilateral collaborations, and working as anchor institutions, we shall create transformative and open learning opportunities that extend the horizon of expectations for tomorrow’s graduates and researchers, both in Europe and throughout the world.’ EUTOPIA also established the mid-term commitment to create ‘multi-versities’ that extend multi-disciplinarity, multi-lingualism and multi-stakeholder involvement, producing research and learning that shapes the world and gives Europe a distinctive, daring and driven voice. European Universities Transforming to an Open, Inclusive Academy for 2050 / EUTOPIA Page 3 of 157 EUTOPIA will therefore work simultaneously on three fronts: through the alliance, though individual institutions, through the alliance’s work with stakeholders. It will apply the ‘distinctive, daring and driven’ mantra to transversal educational and research programmes, and physical and digital mobility for students and staff. It will accelerate internal transformations necessary to address global challenges. It will mount challenges in leading support of European and international decision-making concerning macro shifts required for talent development and policy determination. The EUTOPIA plan is organised into three areas: strategy development; development and implementation of tools and instruments; implementation of pilot cases. Through the work packages, these areas are developed through Policy and Practice objectives: 1. A governance structure and strategy for managing a European University alliance 2. A common Learning Community 3. A common set of Knowledge Creation Communities 4. A place-making capacity, policy and practice 5. An inclusion and balanced societies policy and practice 6. A grounded and global internationalisation 7. A sustainability and dissemination policy and practice These objectives directly drive seven work packages, whose concrete activities and deliverables are described in Part III. By 2025, EUTOPIA will produce the following scalable results: A jointly adopted strategy for the ongoing transformation of the universities towards a European University based upon interdependency and openness A set of instruments and tools to operationalise the project and vision of EUTOPIA An evaluation of case studies conducted through the piloting plan. I.2. Level of ambition and innovative approach of the proposal: 1.2.1 Explain how your alliance will ensure, through new and innovative structural models, a higher level of enhanced, sustainable cooperation as compared to what is already done by the members of the alliance. Please focus in particular on cooperation across the various levels of the organisations and across different areas of activity, building on complementary strengths of the partners. (max. 500 words) The piloting plan will establish the foundations of a fully federated inter-university campus by developing new and shared approaches to research, education and innovation, and by installing and testing a collaborative multi-level governance model necessary for long-term structural transformation. We will develop educational formats and pedagogical approaches that endorse the vision of openness and societal engagement fundamental to EUTOPIA. EUTOPIA universities will therefore open up, share and co-write programme content; and transform the learning resource by leveraging the diversity of practice and outlook. Trans-institutional teams of staff, students and experts