CHARM-EU is an alliance that was created in 2019 in response to the European University Initiative launched by the European Commission. Five universities (University of Barcelona, Trinity College Dublin, Utrecht University, Eötvös Loránd University Budapest and University of Montpellier) gathered to create a Challenge-driven, Accessible, Research-Based and Mobile European University. The purpose of this new European University is to become a world example of the best of the European education tradition, offering a intercultural, inclusive, flexible, student-centred learning experience to citizens from the entire world, and at the same time to serve as test bed for innovation and a mean to improve our universities.
In order to achieve its objectives, the first step to working together was to build a shared governance and to include this alliance within the existing governance structures of the partner universities. To address this issue the project planned for a governance work package, Future governance and management design (WP2) which mission was to build the organization structure that suited the purpose and to design policies and procedures to create a framework for the alliance to work together and to be able to expand and scale its activities.
This deliverable 2.4 Handbook on CHARM-EU’s innovative governance and management model is being implemented as the Governance of CHARM-EU. Furthermore, it was designed as a way to disseminate its model for other alliances to better understand the stakes of the governance and management and to make the model transferable. This handbook is designed to present the challenges faced by CHARM-EU when thinking and building a shared governance. It introduces the solutions and areas of improvement identified by the Governance WP team, and identifies the issues that require external development, such as the creation of a new statute for a legal entity.
The Governance WP was divided into subgroups to enable experts to tackle specific issues from their field. Each subgroup was responsible for a chapter in this Handbook to deal with their topic:
– 2.1. Governance, autonomy and legal aspects
– 2.2. Resources management, financing and sustainability
– 2.3. Staffing
– 2.4. Services and IT
– 2.5. Quality and accreditation
In this Handbook, you will first find the definition of the concepts and introduction of the context for European Universities. Second, you will find a detailed presentation of CHARM-EU through its values, mission and vision. Finally, you will learn about the procedures and policies that were written by the different subgroups. In this last part, you will understand the challenges and thinking related to each specific topic and the solutions that were used.
This Handbook is a result of the WP2 for the CHARM-EU first three-year work plan, it aims at describing the work on Governance and sets the basis for the development and expansion of the alliance.
