Unite! European University Alliance starts its new era advancing a digital and green Europe

Unite! has closed its pilot phase and launched the new phase to implement sustainable, concrete and beneficial outputs advancing a digital and green Europe. How can Aalto University make the best out of the alliance? Join the open discussion event on 16 November, 2022.

Unite!’s proposal to be a technology and innovation driver for the advancement of a green and digital Europe was approved in July 2022 by the European Commission (EC). Over the past three years the alliance's working groups with more than 500 active members from faculty, staff, administration and students have deployed the pilot phase. From Aalto University more than 50 persons have been involved. This new phase builds on the work and projects already initiated and is inspired and guided by the alliance's Mission Statement 2030.

The new phase was kicked-off by the Unite! Steering Committee in their meeting at TU Graz in the beginning of November 2022.TU Graz is one of the two new partners in the alliance together with Wroclaw Tech. In the Steering Committee meeting, the candidates for the vice presidency of Unite! were announced. The candidates are President Ilkka Niemelä from Aalto University and Rector Daniel Crespo from Universitat Politècnica de Catalunya. Unite! Academic Forum will make the decision on 29 November, 2022.

Unite! wants to be a model European university of innovation, technology and engineering that addresses the Sustainable Development Goals through a digital and green transition. To achieve this, the alliance will foster bottom-up community development and strengthen student participation and engagement in all its expert communities.

Among the various projects that the alliance is working on, more concrete outputs include joint programmes, virtual collaborative courses for students, student mobility, pedagogical courses for teachers, sustainable processes for support services and staff mobility between the partner universities.

In the new phase there are nine expert communities, each led by one of the partner universities:

• Management, Governance and Quality Assurance (led by TUDa) 
• Innovative Teaching and Learning (led by Aalto)
• Digital Campus (led by TU Graz) 
• Inclusion, Diversity and Well-being (led by ULisboa)
• Flexible Educational Offerings (led by KTH)
• Professional Development and Training (led by Grenoble INP-UGA)
• PhD for Research, Innovation and Society (led by PoliTO)
• Open Innovation Community for Green Transition (led by Wroclaw Tech) and
• Strategic Outreach, Impact and Dissemination (led by UPC).

New leadership for Unite! activities in Aalto 

Minna-Kaarina Forssén started as the Key Liaison Officer (KLO) for Unite! at Aalto in September 2022 after the retirement of the former KLO Professor Katrina Nordström. Anneli Vartio joined as Aalto's project manager for the Unite! Erasmus+ activities in June 2022. Rubén Vicente-Saez continues as the Unite!H2020 project manager.

This article was first published on 8 November by Aalto University.