ATHENA seminar "Interlinking with regional stakeholders"
How can European University alliances work more effectively with regional companies? To answer this question, the University of Siegen, as a member of the ATHENA alliance, organised a hybrid seminar on 30 November 2021 at the Campus Unteres Schloss.
The seminar took place in the framework of the five-part event series The European University initiative, from European policy to practice on the ground: Solutions for smart integration. Supported by the French embassies in Germany, Portugal and Slovenia, this series accompanies the handover of the EU Council presidency from Slovenia to France on 1 January 2022.
Among the seminar guests were numerous members of European University alliances, representatives of local and international industry as well as interested persons from the University of Siegen and ATHENA. At the beginning of the event, Prof. Dr. Hubert Roth, ATHENA project leader in Siegen, introduced the alliance and its goals for cooperation with local industry partners. Stimulating keynote speeches by Sascha Diedler (TU Hamburg, University Alliance ECIU) and Dr. Justinas Janulevičius (entrepreneur and associate professor at Vilnius Gediminas Technical University in Lithuania, joined online) rounded off the first part of the seminar. Both speeches focused on the opportunities and challenges of cooperation between universities and industry, especially with regard to the implementation of joint, practice-oriented projects.
This was followed by a lively panel discussion moderated by Prof. Dr. Peter Haring Bolívar. Along with Dr. Anne Friederike Delouis, Vice-President for International Relations at the University of Orléans, and Prof. Dr. Volker Wulf, Prorector for Digital and Regional Affairs, the three speakers discussed measures to promote innovation and the need to modernise teaching in order to react flexibly and effectively to global market needs.
In the course of the event series, four seminars on core topics of European University alliances take place in November and December 2021, each hosted by a different ATHENA partner university. The grand finale will be a high-level event in February 2022, where the results of the four seminars are presented to representatives from European politics and higher education. The aim of this event, organised by the University of Orléans, is to raise awareness of the current challenges faced by European University alliances.
The video of the event is available on the ATHENA European University YouTube channel.