On Wednesday, October 12th 2022, Palacký University Olomouc hosted an Aurora LOUIS Workshop to help its academics further develop the quality of their courses by focusing on the societal impact of the learning outcomes.

The workshop, hosted by Kees Kouwenaar, aimed to equip the participants with the knowledge and skills necessary for implementing LOUIS into their classes, allowing them to project, design and innovate their own courses.

Following the “Train the Trainers” principle, the participants are currently preparing to train others in their faculty using the LOUIS tool. Three of such faculty pieces of training are already scheduled to take place, with several others currently being planned.

Aurora is proud to announce that it received a glowing review from the European Commission on its midterm report for the Aurora European University Alliance.
The commission praised the Alliance for making significant progress across all work packages, reaching nearly every milestone resulting in significant immediate or potential impact. The report reads:

“This alliance has made remarkable progress and can serve as a model of what is possible to achieve as an alliance. This alliance is clearly driving innovation across all partner institutions and collectively as an alliance.”

The Aurora European University Alliance was established with the aim of advancing education and research within Europe. It is made up of 10 universities based in 10 European countries, and it strives to support our teachers in equipping their students with the skills and mindset needed for our graduates to thrive in a rapidly changing society and labour market and to turn them into social entrepreneurs and innovators, willing and able to contribute to solving the major challenges of our societies.

Since its inception in 2020, the Alliance has achieved several milestones, including joint courses across all four of our pilot domains, a pool of Aurora mentors for doctoral candidates, an Aurora certification for courses, the SDG Research Dashboard, which demonstrates how research at our universities done in the field of SDGs is picked up by policymakers; the Aurora Sustainable Campus plan, several experts and support centres, and much more.

Professor Mirjam van Praag, President of the Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam, lead university of the Alliance, said:

“I could not be prouder of the progress that the Aurora Alliance has made and all the staff members who have worked hard to make it happen. We look forward to continuing our work together and providing more opportunities for students, academics, and university staff. I am confident that the Alliance will continue to grow and deliver on our promises.”

Professor Jón Atli Benediktsson, President of the University of Iceland and President of Aurora

“All Alliance partners have worked hard and put their best foot forward. Many thanks to the entire Aurora community for their dedication. This evaluation validates the path we’ve taken and will inspire everyone involved in Aurora to keep going in the coming years.”

On the 1st and 2nd of December, Palacký University Olomouc organises the European Universities Forum. This high-level event, organised in the light of the Czech EU presidency, will provide an opportunity to discuss and assess the role of European Universities Initiative pilot phase in the Czech higher education context and within the European aims of building the Higher Education Area.

This event will be an incubator for new ideas on the mobilisation of universities, in the broadest sense, to promote shared European values and a strengthened identity and also to improve the quality, attractiveness and international competitiveness of Europe’s higher education establishments.

This forum will be opened by the Czech Deputy-Minister for Education and brings together the participating universities from various Member States, the European Commission and, of course, all of the relevant stakeholders, particularly the alliances of European universities.

The two-day programme features:

• Two high-level panel sessions addressing the priorities of the European Universities’ ambitions
• Three “Alliance workshops” intended as spaces for exchanging best practices between Czech alliances and their top management focusing on research and education developments, offering initial feedback on their pilot phase to contribute to developing the next steps
• A closing session, reporting on the panels and thematic sessions to contribute to Czech national and European level on the Future of European universities in Higher Education.

For more information on the event, take a look at euf.upol.cz. For more information on the schedule, take a look here.

This autumn saw the kick-off of the Aurora Student Schemes, in which Aurora Students have the opportunity to sign up for the role of Student Ambassador and Student Champion. Ambassadors get the opportunity to take part in a variety of online and in-person workshops and events, together with other students from across all Aurora Universities, to boost the personal and professional development of the participants.

The role of Student Champion was created specifically for students that want to work on key Aurora topics, in addition to the joint activities provided to Aurora Student Ambassadors. After at least 15 hours of combined participation in the program and the working groups, participants will receive the  Aurora Student Champion certificate.

This year’s programme, led by Palacký University Olomouc, received 100 applications for the role of Student Ambassador. The majority of students that signed up were from the University of Naples Frederico II and the University of Iceland, followed by Duisburg-Essen, Innsbruck and East Anglia.

More information on the Aurora Student Schemes can be found at https://aurora-universities.eu/Aurora-student-schemes/.

On the 9^th and 10^th of November, the Aurora virtual Biannual took place, hosted by the University of Duisburg-Essen. Barbara Albert, Rector of the University of Duisburg-Essen, and Jon Ali Benediktsson, Aurora President and the Rector University of Iceland,  welcomed the participants, encouraging them to choose sustainability above all else.

Rector Barbara Albert said: “Now more than ever, we become aware that the big challenges of humanity like climate crisis, peacebuilding, sustainable energy supply, or migration do not stop at national borders. As director of one of Germany’s ten largest universities, it is my strong belief that international cooperation between ambitious and sustainable-oriented universities can be one of the key drivers of progress when it comes to finding solutions to these major challenges.”

Aurora President Jon Atli Benediktsson emphasised the importance of sustainable travel and inter-university collaboration that results in opportunities for staff, students, and the community at large.

The conference also highlighted the future activities of the Aurora Network. Anne-May Janssen, Aurora Secretary-General, discussed the role of universities being drivers of positive social change and ensuring graduates can affect that change in society. She said that, ” […] the role of universities in affecting that change has become increasingly important and the developments over the past years globally.” She continued with the message that the Aurora Network can help its members fulfil those roles. In order to do that, the Aurora Network will focus its work on the following activities:

• Setting the agenda on the topics that our members want to prioritise
• Aurora as an environment for our members to share best practices and openly, and in confidence, discuss hurdles
• Advocacy and engagement with stakeholders on the EU level
• Safeguarding our partnerships by keeping the long-term vision in mind
• Sourcing new funding opportunities for our members
• Reaching out to the global community and learning from future members beyond Europe.

In the Back to the Future of the Aurora Alliance session, Sabine Allain Sainte-Rose shared key results of the various work packages and task teams. Some of them included:

• Co-Creation brought together 400 academics and opened 70 co-creation and service-learning courses for all Aurora partners this resulted in a total of 1800 students enrolled.
• 52 courses offered by the pilot Domains
• 500+ mobile individuals
• Aurora academic platform pooled infrastructures + doctoral committee members where 272 researchers signed up from 5 universities in all pilot domains.
• 1400+ open educational resources have been collected

On the 9^th and 10^th of November the Aurora virtual Biannual took place, hosted by the University of Duisburg-Essen. The theme of the Biannual was: Sustainable Resources and Mobility in Europe. The programme focused primarily on the United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goals, with supporting keynotes on mobility and aquatic ecosystems.

The first keynote by Florian Freitag of the University of Duisburg-Essen and Salvador Clave of Universitat Rovira i Virgili, addressed how we need to move towards sustainable tourism and highlighted how the pandemic had changed the view of travel towards a more sustainable approach to lessen the carbon dioxide emissions. The second keynote by Professor Bernd Sures of the University of Duisburg-Essen, explored the vast wealth and utility of water—as well as its scarcity. Professor Sures, an aquatic ecologist, found that future population growth, urban expansion and pollution are likely to create growing demands on water supplies. He said, “[…] it is imperative we begin discussing how to distribute scarce water resources.”

During the coffee breaks, the programme featured interviews with Academy in Exile artist Diren Demir who showcased two of their artworks, Map of the Seas and Calling back Nature. The Map of the Seas was produced especially for the biannual to support the theme of sustainability. In addition, Sara Mardini, a refugee from Syria, spoke on the criminalization of refugee aid and her own experience making that journey.

The infoday on 22 September about the call for proposals of the Marie Skłodowska-Curie Doctoral Networks (MSCA-DN) of the European Commission was attended by 42 people from the URV, the universities of the Aurora network and the Spanish State. It provided the information and the practical tools necessary for applicants to adapt their proposals to the objectives and requirements of this funding programme.

The MSCA Doctoral Networks call consists in implementing doctoral programmes through associations of organisations from different sectors in Europe and beyond to train highly qualified doctoral students, stimulate their creativity, improve their innovation skills and enhance their long-term employability.

Xavier Eekhout, head of the mobility and professional development projects for researchers, EURAXESS Spain and the MSCA National Contact Point in Spain, gave an overview of the call for proposals. Karin Rade of the Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam (Netherlands) gave practical advice on what the university believes works best in this call and how they support it. To increase impact and applicability, Hatem Rashwan, researcher at the URV Department of Computer Engineering and Mathematics, presented his success story, the BosomShield project, which won the call for proposals of 2021.

Opportunity for collaboration between the universities of the Aurora network

MSCA Doctoral Networks 2022 are an opportunity to deepen research collaborations among the priority partners of the Aurora network. This alliance of nine European universities, committed to research excellence and the social impact of their actions, has already developed a series of tools for giving visibility to the research of their centres, including the Sustainable Development Goals Panel (SDG Dashboard) to share resources and train doctoral students in transversal skills. Therefore, the proposals presented linked to Aurora will be enhanced by access to this joint infrastructure.

The MSCA Doctoral Networks 2022 call will close on 15 November. The complete information can be consulted on the website of the call.

The URV group that organized this infoday, USPIR, provides support to the research community in the drafting of proposals for obtaining international funding for research projects.

The infoday on MCSA Doctoral Networks can be seen again at this link.