EuroTeQ – Who is Who behind our activities?
Meet Carla Albrecht-Hengerer – EuroTeQ Project Manager
Since the very beginning in 2020, EuroTeQ has been coordinated by Carla Albrecht-Hengerer – a true European, a diplomat at heart, a mother of three and a resourceful colleague to many. Working from Technical University of Munich (TUM) for the whole alliance, she is passionate about creating learning and mobility opportunities for students, staff and professionals and enjoys working on the interface of all content-related work packages and tasks. While keeping an overall view to finances, monitoring, timeline and the overall successful delivery of the promised activities and milestones of EuroTeQ.
Carla, how do you do it all?
(laughs) I am not doing it all. I am coordinating the work of many wonderful colleagues across the partner universities. In the beginning, it was all about setting-up the right structures, but now, after four years, there is a great dynamic and progress, many activities are taking place simultaneously and the complexity has grown. We are now a group of nine partner universities, of which some have been close partners even before EuroTeQ started. CTU and TalTech joined in 2020 and integrated so well, and now we are onboarding HEC, IESE and EPFL. People bring a lot of energy to EuroTeQ, because we all see the greater good of this project – to shape the educational paths of young people and bring them together with their European peers. This is what I enjoy most.
What accomplishments are the most rewarding for you, and where do you still see a lot of challenges?
The automated Course Catalogue is a great accomplishment that we are very proud of. Creating interfaces to the university’s campus management systems so that live data is displayed on the EuroTeQ website was a challenging task. We faced much resistance at the beginning and had to overcome uncertainty about which IT standards to go for. It now becomes easier for students to access courses offered across the EuroTeQ partners that are not available at their home institution. The next step is to scale them up, automatize the registration process and incentivize teachers to offer courses to EuroTeQ students.
I am also very happy about the EuroTeQ Collider, which is at the heart of EuroTeQ in many ways. To have implemented a challenge-based learning format at each partner that runs in parallel and comes to one joint final European event, the EuroTeQaThon, has not been easy with divergent semester times, study programs and approaches to learning. I looked into many enthusiastic faces and fantastic solutions for real-life problems have been developed in interdisciplinary teams. Supporting the teams and individuals in their entrepreneurial aspirations, will be the next challenge. We are also still experimenting with ways to integrate vocational and professional learners in our challenge teams, to bring out the true diversity of people to “collide”.
Designing joint professional education offers such as Micro-Credentials and an Executive Program is one of the topics that is very ambitious and where I see challenges. At the beginning, cooperation in the professional field seems easier because it avoids accreditation and recognition hurdles. The more you cooperate, however, we see that continuous education or lifelong learning has a very different interpretation and structural set-ups at the partners and in the end, it is about economic interests. This autumn, we will run first pilots and come out with the full program in 2025.
Overall, the most important accomplishment to me is the network we have created. It is a group of peers that spans across eight countries, and connects administrative and academic staff, project managers, researchers, teachers and students. We all expand our horizon, get out of our routines and institutionally shaped way of thinking. This vibrant network is the basis of EuroTeQ’s success.
EuroTeQ is now one of 64 alliances funded by the European Commission. With your background of having worked for the Commission and EU-projects for over 10 years, where do you see the future of the European Universities Initiative going?
The initiative is of course much appreciated, as it spotlights the need to internationalize and innovate education and calls for new ideas to strengthen higher education in Europe. Yet, I believe that we need strategic discussions on where we are heading. I think stringent monitoring and evaluation are important as there is a need for the Commission to develop a clear strategy what the alliances should accomplish, e.g. role model and pilot experimentation approach vs long-term institutionalization, isolated European universities vs permeability between the alliances. In the next years, we will put a greater focus on networking and outreach activities on national and European level.
Carla, collaborating on this kind of level takes a lot of energy. How do you recharge?
After a long workday, I enjoy coming home to my family. This is a different sort of project management (laughs), but also very rewarding. I sometimes think my son would benefit from a study environment like the Collider and I would wish that the (German) school system could be more innovative, international and incorporate more challenge-based learning activities or generally be more flexible and adaptive to the learning situations of the children. Here, European best practice exchange could also be beneficial. While my free time is very limited, I take energy out of the passion to inspire, to bring people together and to do something for the future generation.
Thank you Carla for this interview. Have a lovely summer!
Interested to reach out to Carla, please contact her via carla-hengerer@tum.de.
