UNITE!

The University Network for Innovation, Technology and Engineering (UNITE!) will educate a new generation of European students in science, technology and engineering, transcending the traditional engineering education, with an entrepreneurial mindset. UNITE! will take advantage of the broad spectrum of disciplines, beyond their common core in science and engineering, to integrate multidisciplinarity with arts, design, business, humanities and social sciences. UNITE! will thus educate students as European and global citizens who contribute to the advancement of knowledge, European competitiveness and solutions to global challenges. This will be achieved through:

• Mobility for all students, extending to new short-term programmes, summer schools and joint programmes.
• Mobility for all staff, including thematic staff weeks and a teaching staff pilot community that will test innovative ways of teaching.
• Virtual Campus that includes a platform for digital mobility, virtual spaces and online tools.
• Teaching and Learning Academy to help professors and educators develop models for flexible study paths and innovative pedagogies.
• Trans-regional network for open innovation and entrepreneurship that enables sharing of local and regional education, supports services for future entrepreneurs and aims to provide input to regional strategies.

UNITE! is a network of universities extended from Finland to Portugal, a distance of more than 3.300 km, connecting European regions of economic prospect, entrepreneurship and innovation. Together, the seven partners have 167,000 students and annually 36,700 graduates. They are already cooperating closely on more than 80 EU projects and have exchanged over 2,000 students in the past five years.

UNITE! originates from the CLUSTER network – Consortium Linking Universities of Science and Technology for Education and Research – and builds on three decades of close and dedicated cooperation on different aspects of higher education, research, innovation and social responsibility. Based on their long-standing successful cooperation within the CLUSTER network, UNITE! partners share a strong commitment to implement a paradigm shift for excellence in learning, teaching and research in accordance with the European core values of human dignity, liberal democracy, the rule of law, and social inclusion.

UNITE! is a University Network for Innovation, Technology and Engineering, which will:

• EMPOWER students, staff and faculty to become the owners of a new European University concept by encouraging an active participation at all levels in the development of flexible study paths and joint curricula with embedded mobility across Europe and the world.
• DEVELOP a European University by sharing resources and services in education, research and management, by removing structural barriers and by generating new frameworks for a European degree.
• PIONEER new concepts of education and research in science, technology and engineering by drawing on innovative transdisciplinary approaches stemming from art, design, architecture, business, social sciences and the humanities.
• EDUCATE a new generation of European students in science, technology and engineering who actively contribute to the advancement of knowledge, European competitiveness and the development of solutions for societal challenges.
• EXEMPLIFY the role of a (virtual and physical) European inter-university campus that connects the regional innovation ecosystems of its member universities, makes their boundaries fluid and functions as a platform of open interaction and the free circulation of ideas.

Still in doubt? Watch these testimonials from students who participated last year in the INSPIRED project.