Category: Featured article

The first 2022 Steering Committee and annual General Assembly of CLUSTER was held virtually at Grenoble INP-UGA from 2^nd to 3^rd of March.

Since the previous SC, the WG groups have met regularly which generates new activities, such as joint submissions for call for proposals for European projects.

Current and upcoming activities of the Consortium were intensively discussed during the Steering Committee such as the students’ implication in the network with the idea to launch a face-to-face event in Grenoble for CLUSTER students and the role & admission of associate members in order to enlarge the Consortium.

The candidacy for the upcoming CLUSTER presidency 2022-2024 was made by Rector Luc Sels from KU Leuven and was approved by unanimous vote during the General Assembly.

Composition of the elected presidency KU Leuven for the CLUSTER presidency from 1^st of July 2022 to 30^th of June 2024:

• – President: Luc Sels, Rector of KU Leuven and full professor at Faculty of Economics and Business
• – Secretary General : Jos Van Der Sloten, full professor and vice dean for international affairs of the Faculty of Engineering Science

Two webinars were held in conjunction to the General Assembly (they were labelled by the French Council of the European Union presidency and by the Grenoble European Green Capital 2022)

• – The construction of Europe through European universities Alliances
• – The contribution of engineering to the challenges of climate change

Presidents, professors and students from CLUSTER member universities were among the panellists of the webinars.

The next Steering Committee will be held at Politecnico di Torino, Italy from 22^nd to 23^rd of September 2022.

Given that:

• CLUSTER network acknowledges the role of universities as a vehicle for peace and resilience, and cherishes a climate of open collaboration and cooperation as well as solidarity;

• CLUSTER network recognises that the successful realisation of its mission depends on the intensity of collaboration between all members and the strength of each member’s commitment to contribute to the network;

• CLUSTER, as a multinational network of publicly funded universities, recognizes the importance of compliance with the policies and legal or regulatory frameworks developed at governmental and university level;

• Several CLUSTER members’ governments recently introduced sanctions as an important signal against the Russian government’s decision to invade Ukraine and have instructed the universities to suspend all forms of institutional collaboration with Russian and Belarusian HEI;

• All CLUSTER members continue and, in some cases, reinforce their efforts to support students, researchers and staff from all nationalities who are currently in their institutions.

It was therefore decided by CLUSTER Network:

• To suspend any institutional collaboration between the CLUSTER network and all Russian and Belarusian HEIs as long as any CLUSTER member will be required to do so;

• That this will not prevent individual researchers, staff and students from CLUSTER universities to connect with individual researchers, staff and students from Russia and Belarus universities.

This statement does not represent the individual members’ positions and is not binding on the individual CLUSTER members’ policies regarding bilateral cooperation with Russian and Belarusian universities.

The General Assembly and the first 2022 Steering Committee of CLUSTER will be held in online format by Grenoble INP-UGA from 2nd to 3rd of March.

Grenoble INP-UGA will organize two conferences (https://cluster.org/pfue/) in conjunction with this event. These two conferences can be followed remotely and will be translated into French live.

The first conference will focus on the construction of Europe through European universities Alliances. The members of CLUSTER are all members of Alliances of European universities (in particular the Unite! alliance which is composed of 7 members of the CLUSTER network). We are honored to have at this round table a scientific personality who can give his vision of the trajectory of these European alliances. Actors of these alliances (presidents, vice-presidents, directors and students) chosen within CLUSTER and UNITA, another Alliance of the Auvergne Rhône Alpes region, will share their experience and the stakes which found their action (see more here).

The second conference will focus on the contribution of engineering to the challenges of climate change. It will bring together scientists from CLUSTER universities.

Registration link for the webinars: https://enquetes.univ-grenoble-alpes.fr/v4/s/lco057

The second 2021 Steering Committee of CLUSTER was held in hybrid format at Université Catholique de Louvain (UCLouvain) in Louvain-la-Neuve from 29^th to 30^th of October. Finally CLUSTER representatives and members were able to see each other again and spend time together on and off meetings such as enjoying a visit of Hergé’s (author of Tintin) Museum .

Since the previous SC, the new Working Group (WG) on the relationships between African universities and CLUSTER was created and five meetings were held. The existing WGs have also met regularly in this period. Outcomes were presented such as the one from the WG on sustainable development (SD) in engineering programs with the creation of a dedicated webpage (https://cluster.org/students/sd-programmes/) referencing the SD policies and courses offer of each CLUSTER member.

Current and upcoming activities of the Consortium were intensively discussed during the Steering Committee such as the students’ implication in the network with the idea to launch an event for CLUSTER students and the role & admission of associate members.

The announcement of candidacy for the upcoming CLUSTER presidency 2022-2024 was made by Rector Luc Sels from KU Leuven and will be decided by a vote on the next General Assembly.

The next Steering Committee and the annual General Assembly will be held at Grenoble INP-UGA in Grenoble from 2^nd to 3^rd of March 2022.

 

 

What is the Global Future Skills Project?

The Global Future Skills Project is seeking for contributions of your visionary and Future Skills-based higher education programs, courses and teaching & learning concepts built around supporting students’ Future Skills development.

In a world which is changing faster than ever before, it has never been more urgent to actively shape this global transformation in order to create the best possible future. Today’s students need to learn the necessary skills for this – Future Skills. The challenge of promoting them is one of the currently most debated challenges for higher education institutions all over the world. The Global Future Skills Project intends to build the first global entry point to access visionary higher education programs aiming at future skills for their graduates. This will be achieved through a) a video-based web portal portraying good practices and b) through an academic book publication. The project aims at increasing visibility for existing and emerging innovative teaching and learning practices, connecting educational innovators and promoting peer learning. Please contact us to contribute a book chapter in this upcoming globally leading Springer Publication.

Button: Submit your program here!

https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSdB1B986MoOJsyUGcXMyldAEpCbw0X6CG2w0nfLJVVy281bqg/viewform

Future Skills? Future Skills are Skills which enable students to collectively impact societal transformation in order to create more sustainable futures. The Future Skills concept is based on educational research, comprises 17 skills profiles and represents a strong alternative vision of higher education. Throughout the past decade, the NextEducation research group has established an internationally unique and broad insight into the theory and conceptualization of Future Skills as a model for Future Higher Education (for more information: www.nextskills.org).

Global? The Global Future Skills Project aims to look for exemplary programs in the field of higher education. It seeks to cover approaches from all six continents and elicit ground-breaking and visionary future education programs. In a high-level peer-reviewed academic publication, the authors will explain in-depth their approach, methods, experiences and evidence of their selected good-practice Future Skill programs. The book will be published by “Springer” in the Series “Future Higher Education” as an open access publication, without any costs for authors.

Observatory? In addition, a global observatory website will be set up where good practice programs will be presented. In order to allow a maximum of peer learning, a short presentation video will be produced for each example and disseminated through the website. With the dedicated website and book publication, the project will support Global Future Skills Education in different contexts by inciting reflection on and assessment of Future Skills within a global milestone research publication.

What are we looking for?

We are seeking for visionary and Future Skills-based higher education programs, courses and teaching & learning concepts built around supporting students’ Future Skills development. Future Skills are understood as skills enabling graduates to act as transformative agents in emergent developments in organizations, societies and the world as a whole. We therefore seek book chapters on:
• teaching and learning concepts in higher education that are currently being implemented or have already been implemented.
• individual projects, course, study programs or holistic general teaching concepts, also but not limited to cooperation with corporate and civil society actors
• A new vision of higher education and the development of students’ Future Skills as well as its teaching-learning approach should be central

Who takes the initiative?

The „Global Future Skills Project“ is initiated by two globally leading universities: The Baden-Wuerttemberg Cooperative State University (DHBW) (www.dhbw.de) and the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (KIT) (www.kit.edu) in Germany. An expert team from both institutions is cooperating on the implementation of the global initiative, led by Prof. Dr. Ulf-Daniel Ehlers, Professor of Education Management and Lifelong Learning at DHBW, Head of NextEducation Research Group (www.next-education.org) and initiator of the groundbreaking NextSkills study (www.nextskills.org) in cooperation with Dr. Michael Stolle, Managing Director of KIT’s House of Competence.

Contact us for further information!

• Please contact us via global@nextskills.org for all project-related questions!
• Project website: https://nextskills.org/globalfutureskills
• Information on the Future Skills concept and research: https://www.nextskills.org/
• NextEducation research team: https://next-education.org/
• House of Competence: https://www.hoc.kit.edu/

The first 2021 Steering Committee (SC) together with the annual General Assembly of CLUSTER was held virtually at KTH, Stockholm from 18th to 19th of March.

Since the previous SC, the newly created Working Groups on sustainable development in engineering programs and on the European Universities Alliances have met twice. The existing Working Groups have also been actively working during this time span and their activities were reported.

The main focus of discussion was the relationship between the CLUSTER network and future partners outside of Europe such as African universities. For this matter the role & admission of associate members is planned to be re-discussed and the creation of a new Working Group about relations with Africa was decided.

Current and upcoming activities of the Consortium were intensively discussed during the General Assembly such as the idea of creating a side event at COP26 to present CLUSTER activities, of giving the Industrial Engineering and Management department a new strategy, of celebrating the 30th anniversary in 2022. The students’ implication in the network CLUSTER SC and the future agreement for the SEEEP doctoral training program with China were among the important subjects of this General Assembly.

The next Steering Committee will be held at Université Catholique de Louvain, Belgium, from 28th to 29th of October 2021.