Securing new funding to implement and develop CHARM-EU’s innovative vision
The CHARM-EU European University Alliance, of which the University of Montpellier is a member, has been awarded a grant of €12.8 million for the “CHARM-EIGHT” project under the 2022 Erasmus+ call for European Universities. By bringing three new partners into the alliance, CHARM-EU will continue to deepen, intensify, and expand the effectiveness of existing cooperation to advance the transformation of higher education and increase the impact of “European Universities.”
In 2019, the CHARM-EU alliance was among the first 17 selected by the European Commission as part of the “European Universities” initiative, designed to promote quality, inclusion, and competitiveness in European higher education. Since then, CHARM-EU has established a deep and fruitful collaboration among its partners, leading to the development of several innovative tools, models, programs, and practices. One of these is the first accredited master’s program (“Global Challenges for Sustainable Development”) meeting the criteria of the European Universities Initiative. The alliance has brought together academics from various disciplines and universities into knowledge-creation teams, engaged external stakeholders, and developed a governance model featuring innovative administrative structures underpinned by CHARM-EU’s core values: inclusivity, student-centeredness, social responsibility, sustainability, innovation, transparency, interculturalism, and transdisciplinarity. CHARM-EU has also begun to shape its “research and innovation” dimension through the TORCH project (Transforming Open Responsible Research and Innovation through CHARM), a project funded by the European Union under the Horizon 2020 program, aimed at developing a joint research and innovation (R&I) program for the alliance’s partners, based on transdisciplinarity and interculturality to address complex societal challenges.
The new Erasmus+ grant will enable the CHARM-EU alliance to expand, scale up its innovative activities, implement its long-term vision, and have a systemic, structural, and sustainable impact on society. It will help make the alliance a global model and a game-changer for the best of Europe’s tradition in research, innovation, and education, offering citizens around the world an open, diverse, inclusive, flexible, and entrepreneurship-focused learning experience.
Focus on expanding and improving the CHARM-EU objectives
After developing and testing innovative practices, tools, methods, and approaches during the first years of collaboration, the CHARM-EU alliance will focus on expanding and strengthening its impact while continuing “living lab” activities within CHARM-EIGHT. Aiming to be an influential “icebreaker” that inspires academic and external stakeholders, the alliance will consolidate and strengthen governance and cooperation, develop its challenge-based learning lab and educational offerings with a visible link between research, business, and society, while creating an inter-institutional, intercultural, transdisciplinary, and inclusive campus that will contribute to the European spirit. CHARM-EU will integrate successful innovations and best practices for the direct benefit of its partner institutions, while continuing to develop innovative tools and models and establish new partnerships at all levels.
Initially, the alliance—comprising the University of Barcelona (coordinator), Trinity College Dublin, Utrecht University, Eötvös Loránd University in Budapest, and the University of Montpellier—will be expanded to include Åbo Akademi University in Finland, Julius-Maximilians University of Würzburg, and Hochschule Ruhr West in Germany. The inclusion of these three new partners will contribute to achieving the alliance’s ambitious goals while bringing expertise from different educational systems, particularly in the areas of program design, teaching curricula, learning, and digital transformation.
“All the universities that are members of CHARM-EIGHT are very enthusiastic about this new phase. Furthermore, the new members make us stronger as an alliance,” says Joan Guàrdia, rector of the University of Barcelona (coordinator of CHARM-EIGHT).
CHARM-EIGHT's goals for the benefit of all stakeholders
With support from the new Erasmus+ grant, the CHARM-EU alliance will provide an innovative environment for students, university staff, and non-academic stakeholders. By bringing partners together, more than 245,000 students will benefit from an innovative teaching and learning environment, ensuring they are as well-prepared as possible for the future through a wide range of activities. More than 34,000 staff members will have access to a transdisciplinary and intercultural work environment offering various professional development activities and internal transformation initiatives that will enable them to improve their daily work.
Local and regional stakeholders, as well as society at large, will benefit from cross-disciplinary cooperation aimed at identifying, proposing, and creating solutions to complex challenges. According to Joan Guàrdia, rector of the University of Barcelona, “CHARM-EIGHT is a shared commitment to the future that involves universities and societal stakeholders in the framework of a new European university.”
Since our future depends on society’s ability to provide fair, resilient, and inclusive solutions to global challenges, CHARM-EIGHT will continue to be committed to creating a transformative and sustainable European experience in education and research. It will also contribute positively to shaping Europe’s role in the world, at a time when Europe is undergoing a profound transformation, to reconcile humanity with the planet.