Charm-EU: 64 European students meet Thau Basin professionals

MoxMo (Montpellier cross-thematic mobility) is an Erasmus+ student mobility programme organised for students from the five member universities of the European alliance Charm-EU. From 15 to 26 April, 64 of them will arrive in Montpellier and around the Thau basin to solve six environmental challenges directly linked to the territory and in partnership with the Syndicat mixte du bassin de Thau (SMBT).

MoxMo in a nutshell

From five member universities of the European alliance Charm-EU, including the University of Montpellier, 64 students of the international master's degree "Global Challenges for Sustainable Development" will travel to Montpellier and around the Thau basin to participate in the second edition of MoxMo from 15 to 26 April. A key moment in their training, whose pedagogy is focused on learning by solving challenges, the MoxMo is an opportunity for students to work in international and interdisciplinary teams. Their objective will be to solve six challenges in line with the challenges of the territory: fishing, sustainable tourism and the protection of biodiversity.

Around the Thau basin in the first week and in Montpellier the second, they will meet professionals concerned by the challenges to be solved (start-ups, farmers, fishermen, associations, etc.), but also researchers, teachers and specialists. Also this year: a collaboration with Icireward (Unesco Water Centre) which will allow six foreign PhD students to join the teams working on the challenges of this 2024 edition.

The themes of the six challenges:

• the installation of shellfish tables equipped with solar collectors on the Etang de Thau;
• the installation of AI-based water quality analysis stations on the Etang de Thau;
• the creation of a more than 80 km walking trail around the Thau lagoon;
• the development of a project supported by the Local Food Plan aimed at coordinating local food production actors;
• the appropriation of subsidized actions (MAEC) by farmers and breeders in the territory;
• a large-scale aquaponics sector project in connection with the aquaponics training platform of the University of Montpellier.

MoxMo 2024 highlights:

• Monday, April 15, from 3 to 5 p.m. at the Théâtre de la Mer (Sète): Students will meet the local referents of the six challenges.
• Friday, April 26 from 9 a.m. to 12 p.m. and from 2 p.m. to 4 p.m. at the Triolet campus (Montpellier): Presentation of the challenge solutions in front of a jury of teachers and professionals from the region.

About CHARM-EU

The Charm-EU alliance of European universities was initiated in 2019 under the impetus of the University of Barcelona under the presidency of its then rector, Joan Elias Garcia, in order to respond to the first Erasmus+ call for projects of European Universities. In June 2019, the Charm EU project was one of the 17 winners, bringing together five partners under the coordination of the University of Barcelona, including the University of Montpellier, the University of Utrecht (Germany), Trinity College Dublin (Ireland), the Eötvös Loránd University of Budapest (Hungary). Five European universities have joined the CHARM-EU alliance: Åbo Akademi University (Finland), University of Würzburg (Germany), Rhuhr-West University of Applied Sciences (Germany) and University of Bergen (Norway).

A co-constructed joint master's degree was launched by the CHARM-EU alliance in 2021. Entitled "Global Challenges for Sustainable Development", this transdisciplinary research-based course is based on the resolution of field challenges in line with the problems of society. The projects of the CHARM-EU alliance are numerous: a common catalogue of international courses, the implementation of microcredits, the development of a team-based PhD concept, etc. Today, only 10% of the universities of the 27 member states of the European Union participate in an alliance, and yet already about fifty alliances of European universities have already been created, in which more than 40 French universities participate.