Università degli studi di Modena e Reggio Emilia

UNIgreen - The Green European University: the launch event in Modena from 6 to 8 March

From 6 to 8 March, Unimore is hosting in Modena the operational launch event of the alliance UNIgreen - The Green European University, the first European University in the field of Agro, Green, Biotech and Life Science, which involves seven other European universities together with the University of Modena and Reggio Emilia: the University of Almería (Spain) - coordinator of the network, the Haute Ecole de la Province de Liege (Belgium), the Warsaw University of Life Science (Poland), the Polytechnic University of Coimbra (Portugal), the University of Plovdiv (Bulgaria), the Agricultural University of Iceland (Iceland) and the Sup'Bioptech Engineering School of Biotechnology (France).

A three-day event with a packed programme of meetings between the Rector's Palace and the San Geminiano Complex, with the participation of around eighty delegates, more than 50 of whom came from the seven universities of Spain, Belgium, Poland, Portugal, Bulgaria, Iceland and France. On this occasion, the bodies of the organisational structure of the alliance meet for the first time, with the aim of establishing its rules of operation and future actions.

Work will kick off in the afternoon of Monday 6 March, at 5.30 p.m., with an opening ceremony in the Aula Magna of the Rector's Palace, which will be attended by the rectors or presidents of the eight universities benefiting from the EU grant, as well as by Ana Sofia Coutinho, Project Adviser of EACEA European Education and Culture Executive Agency (EACEA) (remotely connected) and Alessia Ricci, Green officer of the Erasmus+ National Agency INDIRE. The Opening Ceremony will be streamed live on the tv.unimore youtube channel at the link https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5lSkHm1F0po .

At the end of the ceremony, the eight rectors will sign the Declaration of Establishment of UNIgreen - The Green European University, the official act that seals the establishment of UNIgreen's General Assembly and states its main responsibilities and functioning.

The vision of the UNIgreen Alliance is based on conceiving of universities as drivers of ecological transformation in order to promote strategies for local responses in the fields of sustainable agriculture, green biotechnology and life sciences, while addressing global challenges such as achieving a climate-neutral and resource-efficient economy.

‘UniGreen represents a new challenge for the future of education and training in Europe, with the aspiration of becoming the leading European university for sustainable agriculture, green biotechnology and environmental and life sciences,’ claimed Unimore Rector Carlo Adolfo Porro. ‘Its transnational and interdisciplinary dimension also offers many opportunities for collaboration for the entire academic community. This alliance enables us to establish new and deeper relationships with other leading academic institutions in Europe and around the world, thus increasing our capacity to create and transfer knowledge and innovative solutions to address major environmental challenges, and also allowing us to further consolidate and increase our international dimension and exposure. We are honoured, on this launch occasion, to host Rectors and delegates from countries in various parts of Europe: France, Spain, Portugal, Poland, Bulgaria, Belgium, and Iceland. This gives us the opportunity to share ideas and practices of excellence in teaching, research and innovation, thus helping to strengthen our ability to train students who can then go on to quality employment. We are confident that the UNIgreen Alliance will be a significant turning point in promoting sustainable development in Europe and worldwide. As founding partners, we are ready and very determined to make our contribution in this direction’.

‘The UNIgreen Alliance is the result of great collaborative work between the founding universities, which have worked hard to achieve a common goal: to create a network proposal that shares a common vision of sustainable development,' added Prof. Alessandro Capra, delegate for internationalisation -. The work done in the two years of preparation had positive results by testing the teaching staff and technical-administrative personnel of the institutions involved to outline objectives on topics of mutual interest and define a possible integrated partner structure. Furthermore, the relations established with partners resulted in the participation in an Erasmus call with approval of the UGREEN project on green labels. In the 2022 call for tenders, the UNIgreen alliance was approved together with three other alliances against more than thirty applications, achieving a very high rating to our great satisfaction. The importance of an alliance lies precisely in the possibility of sharing knowledge, expertise and good practices between partner universities, and this multidisciplinary and international collaboration will enable the development of innovative solutions to address environmental challenges and promote sustainable development. It is worth mentioning that the proposal was built on the aforementioned “green” themes, but the alliance is between universities; therefore, teaching, research and third mission projects can potentially be developed in all scientific and disciplinary areas'.

The UNIgreen -The Green European University Consortium, which will have a 48-month implementation phase, has received a total contribution of 7 million euro from EACEA, the European Education and Culture Executive Agency, of which Unimore will receive around 950.000 euro.

Categorie: International - english