The University of Oviedo has presented the European University IngEniUm project, an alliance of ten universities, led by the Asturias academic institution, which includes a student body of 200,000 people, a teaching staff of about 10,200 investigators and researchers and about 6,400 people in administration and services staff.

 

In addition to the University of Oviedo, the Karlshrühe University of Applied Sciences (Germany), the G. d'Annunzio Chieti-Pescara University (Italy), the Medical University of Sofia (Bulgaria), the University of Thessaly (Greece), Skövde University (Sweden), Lodz University of Technology (Poland), Rouen Normandie University (France), Cork Institute of Technology (Ireland) and Gheorghe Asachi Technical University of Iași (Bulgaria) also participated.

 

All partners are medium-sised institutions with strong competencies in engineering and biosciences. The project aims to create an international interdisciplinary campus in which open degrees can be taken with each student designing his or her own academic curriculum by combining subjects chosen among those offered in the different partner institutions. 

 

Mono-discipline classical degrees and innovative degrees can be defined with mixed competences in engineering, biosciences (biotechnology, chemistry, biomedicine, etc.) in which related competencies including computer science, data processing (IT in general), oral and written communication, ethics, history and philosophy of science and, of course, languages are included.

 

According to the Vice Chancellor of University Extension and International Projection, Francisco José Borge, this University of Oviedo project "is very ambitious, supported by a large group of partner organisations that include government entities, technology centres, educational associations, student and company associations, among others. IngEniUm's ultimate objective is to create a fully integrated European University with ten units distributed throughout the EU, which grants accredited and recognised higher education degrees, applying the European Approach to Quality Assurance of the Joint Programmes and the Standards and Guidelines for Quality Assurance in the EHEA to achieve the status of self-accreditation institutions, which one of the Alliance's partners has already achieved." 

 

The proposal that has been submitted corresponds to the first phase, to be developed over three years, with five million euros in funding. The approved projects will continue to be financed by the European Executive Agency in the Educational, Audiovisual and Cultural field (EACEA) in the longer term. It is a global project that involves cooperation between partners at academic, research, innovation and social protection levels.