Trinity receives Government funding for its European University Alliance
Posted on: 08 February 2022
Trinity College Dublin has welcomed the Higher Education Authority’s announcement of €3.1 million in funding to Irish higher education institutions who are members of seven European University Alliance.
As a member of the CHARM-EU Alliance, Trinity will receive €442,000 which will help to implement an integrated, long-term joint strategy with its fellow partner universities, as well as supporting further exchanges and engagement.
Minister for Further and Higher Education, Research, Innovation and Science, Simon Harris TD, commented: “This announcement signals our Government’s commitment to the ambitious vision of innovative, globally competitive and attractive European Education Area and European Research Area, in full synergy with the European Higher Education Area. Higher education needs to provide students, staff, and researchers with the skills to find their way in a changing labour market – where a demand for highly skilled people is rising – and to navigate the green and digital transitions. These alliances will assist our institutions in delivering these objectives while promoting gender equality, inclusiveness, and equity.”
Professor Pádraig Carmody, CHARM-EU Project Director at Trinity College Dublin, added: “Trinity is delighted that the Irish government will be co-funding the CHARM-EU Alliance, of which we are a member. CHARM-EU was the only European University Alliance to accredit and successfully launch a new Masters this year and graduates of the programme on Global Challenges for Sustainability will help shape a more sustainable Europe. This funding will allow us to develop new initiatives and scale up our impact in a number of areas thereby helping make the European Education Area a reality.”
Established in 2019, CHARM-EU (Challenge-driven, Accessible, Research-based, Mobile European University) is an initiative originally formed by five research-based European universities – Trinity College Dublin, University of Barcelona, Utrecht University, Eötvös Loránd University and University of Montpellier – funded by the European Union Erasmus+ programme. The Alliance has recently expanded to include a further three university partners: Åbo Akademi University, Finland and Julius-Maximilians-Universität Würzburg and Ruhr West University of Applied Sciences, both in Germany.
CHARM-EU offers a transformative, truly European educational experience to students, with an emphasis on sustainability through the achievement of the Sustainable Development Goals and European Green Deal.
Through challenge-driven curricula, CHARM-EU empowers and inspires traditional as well as non-traditional students and staff to become critical thinkers capable of solving societal challenges linked with the theme of ‘reconciling humanity with the planet’.
While CHARM-EU focuses on teaching, it also integrates research, teaching and entrepreneurship across disciplines. This new form of multi-institutional engagement brings together the efforts of students, academics and non-academic staff, accompanied by a change management plan to implement CHARM-EU’s innovative model. Ultimately, CHARM-EU will become a sustainable, transferable and inclusive model for a European inter-university campus.