The CHARM-EU alliance is built upon its world-class strengths in research and education to provide a curriculum that brings the researcher into the classroom and provides the meaningful integration of research and innovation into teaching and learning. The alliance takes the existing collaboration which up until now has mainly focused on research projects (2415 bilateral co-authored publications) and student/teacher mobility, to the next level of cooperation.
The five partners universities that form CHARM-EU (University of Barcelona, Trinity College Dublin, University of Utrecht and Eötvös Loránd University of Budapest and University of Montpellier) have an excellent research-based background and also share the commitment to innovate and improve the quality of higher education, and to work together across research, innovation, education and the connection points between them.
CHARM-EU will deliver an innovative, challenge-driven, student-centred, and self-directed teaching model that integrates research, teaching, innovation and enquiry within and across the disciplines, open to the whole world. This initiative envisages a European higher education campus utilising the latest modern technology in the service of accessibility and internationalisation.
Flexibility, accessibility and mobility are enabled by technology and built into the educational experience. CHARM-EU will offer a learning experience that, having mobility and inclusivity at its core, is based on the implementation of a transformative approach to program and curricula design, and flexible, skill-oriented modularised structure.
TORCH (Transforming Open Responsible Research and Innovation through CHARM) is a project funded by the European Union under the Horizon 2020 programme which aims to develop a common Research & Innovation (R&I) agenda for the European universities initiative. TORCH aims to achieve this main goal through the consolidation of CHARM-EU's vision and mission (http://charm-eu.eu/en/mission-vision) based on transdisciplinarity and interculturality to solve complex societal challenges and by reinforcing teaching and research strategies as part of the Vision 2030 developed by the European Commission.
The overall objective of the TORCH project is to build up the R&I dimension of the CHARM-EU through the development of a challenge-driven transformative agenda based on a transdisciplinary and intercultural vision to solve complex societal challenges.
For more information about TORCH, please access: https://www.charm-eu.eu/torch
CHARM-EU and its educational and research principles are grounded in the transdisciplinarity. We bring multiple disciplines together with students and extra-academic actors to examine challenges, synthesise approaches and mobilise to take action. In order to boost the transdisciplinary approach, we have created the Knowledge Creating Teams (KCTs). KCTs bring multiple disciplines together to face global challenges and are organised not by discipline, research or educational activity but by key themes that bridge all these activities. Three themes were chosen for CHARM-EU’s first pilot master’s programme “Global Challenges for Sustainability”: Life & Health, Water, and Food.
KCTs are collaborative groups of academics, researchers and extra-academic actors (e.g. traditional and social enterprise) formed around a common expertise/interest related to a sustainability theme. KCTs have two levels of membership: Core and Expanded Network:
- KCT Core: research, develop and teach challenge-based content in the pilot master's programme
- KCT Expanded Network: inform curriculum design and join and build trans-institutional research communities and communities of CHARM-EU stakeholders connected to thematic challenge areas.
Through engagement with CHARM-EU, participants will be supported to build research networks with academic and extra-academic actors from across Europe and to focus their research efforts within thematic challenge areas. They will receive training in transdisciplinary approaches to teaching and research and novel pedagogies including challenge-based learning.
We invite you to become part of the CHARM-EU Community! The successful implementation of this initiative will require the contribution and input of academic and researchers. We hope to see you soon as a part of CHARM-EU Community!
If you would like to become part of the CHARM-EU Community click here or send an email to info@charm-eu.eu