Strategic Expansion: EPFL joins EuroTeQ for second project period
École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne (EPFL) has officially joined the EuroTeQ alliance. The university receives a grant funded by the Swiss Confederation in the European Universities programme, executed by Movetia, the Swiss agency for exchange and mobility. This funding runs in parallel to the call by the European Commission and allows EPFL to become an official associated partner to the EuroTeQ consortium.
It is EuroTeQ’s ambition to develop a diversified partnership with flexible entry points for new partners in the future and by doing so become a role model for the European Higher Education Area and beyond. EPFL is among the first associated partners to get involved and demonstrate the flexibility of the alliance to widen the community.
The objectives of EuroTeQ are well aligned with EPFL’s strategic goals for the education of its more than 12.000 students. EPFL embraced the opportunities of massive open online courses (MOOCs) early. Contributing to the virtual Campus of EuroTeQ will allow to leverage EPFL’s experience with digital education. The EuroTeQ Collider will be an opportunity to share EPFL’s strong action on learning from making in complex and authentic projects with the partners and learn from the experiences in other universities.
EPFL is also excited to work on EuroTeQ professional and lifelong learning portfolio. The EuroTeQ Academy will allow EPFL’s continuing education team – who is developing their next level of lifelong learning approach – to contribute to a common framework, share experiences from local implementation and learn from partners.
For EPFL, it is important to evolve education based on evidence. Building a clearing house on engineering education as part of the EuroTeQ Education Lab will allow EPFL to establish the state-of-the-art in the pedagogical approaches developed throughout the project, thereby informing the design of interventions and relating the experiences of the project back to the current state of knowledge in the engineering education research community.
EuroTeQ partners are especially happy to officially welcome EPFL to the consortium, as many strong connections have formed between the partners within the EuroTech Universities Alliance. Since 2011, DTU, TU/e, TUM and EPFL have joined forces to accelerate their research in high-tech focus areas and advocate for change, through a strong presence in Brussels. Later École Polytechnique Paris and the Technion, Israel, joined EuroTech. The dedicated collaboration – and now expanding cooperation in the realm of education and lifelong learning – will bring the partnership with EPFL to the next level.
Given that EPFL is already familiar with the EuroTeQ project, a smooth and quick on-boarding is expected. “EPFL will significantly contribute to the delivery of our work plan and with that, we will extend the reach of EuroTeQ’s flagship initiatives beyond the core partner universities and beyond the EU” says EuroTeQ Project Manager Carla Albrecht-Hengerer. “The whole team looks forward to engage the EPFL colleagues.”
