First FORTHEM Presidency Meeting at the University of Jyväskylä
The European University Alliance FORTHEM is being funded with EUR 14.4 million in the second round of the European University Initiative. As an alliance of universities from nine European countries, FORTHEM is financed by the European Commission until 2026. In addition to FORTHEM's expansion from its original seven to the present nine universities and the continuing inclusion of non-university partners, a new governance structure has been established for the second funding phase: While during the first four years the FORTHEM Alliance was coordinated by Johannes Gutenberg University Mainz (JGU), coordination of the network will now be rotating among the partner universities. The chair of the FORTHEM Presidency is currently held by the University of Jyväskylä and will be assumed by the University of Valencia in 2024. In addition, a permanent Steering Committee has been appointed. It defines the strategic goals of the alliance and is supported by the General Secretariat. The first FORTHEM Presidency Meeting held at the University of Jyväskylä in Finland last week brought together the University Management, the FORTHEM coordinators as well as Student Council representatives from the nine FORTHEM partner universities.
"Together with our European partner universities in the FORTHEM Alliance, we have accomplished some remarkable achievements over the last four years. We have put in place a range of networking opportunities for our students and teaching staff, researchers and employees. We facilitate communication and exchange in various networks", emphasized JGU President Professor Georg Krausch. "And we are all benefiting from living the European idea, be it in the form of student exchanges, internships, or job shadowing at a partner university. The alliance also supports collaboration in interdisciplinary projects such as in our FORTHEM Labs dealing with contemporary issues, such as climate change, migration, and digital transformation."
To date, for example, about 40 collective short-term mobility events have been organized, involving more than 800 students from all FORTHEM universities. There have been four semester-long FORTHEM Campus programs with rotating host universities; the next four - in Finland (fall 2023), Poland (spring 2024), France (fall 2024) and Romania (spring 2025) - are at the planning stage. Several hundred members of the partner universities have so far taken advantage of different FORTHEM programs, such as semester-long student exchanges and networking with colleagues active in the same field at one of the other European universities. Academics of the FORTHEM universities have collaborated in dozens of joint research and academic projects and have produced joint publications. The FORTHEM Digital Academy, which was established in recent semesters and continues to grow rapidly, provides a wealth of online courses. FORTHEM students can use this digital platform to further their education at any time, improving, for instance, their skills in foreign languages or gaining deeper insight into aspects such as environmental protection.
One of the main subjects on the FORTHEM agenda in the new funding period will be to identify additional key topics in which FORTHEM expertise from teaching and research can help build meaningful collaboration and exchange with society to solve challenges of our modern world. Members of the FORTHEM universities are already joining forces with partners from other educational institutions, non-profit organizations, and private businesses in nine issue-focused FORTHEM Labs to develop future-oriented solutions for challenges of societal relevance. This forward-looking approach is also at the heart of the skills and competencies that FORTHEM wants to convey - to maintain excellence in teaching and research and to provide students and early-career researchers with the tools they need to tackle future challenges, thus also improving their competitiveness in the global job market.
About the FORTHEM Alliance
FORTHEM is one of now 44 European University Alliances through which the EU Commission intends to create a European Higher Education Area. The FORTHEM Alliance aims to bring its members and people from all over Europe together - traversing language-barriers, international borders, and academic disciplines - to bring the European idea to life, to promote exchange at a more personal level, and to manifest the commitment to common democratic values. The partner universities promote the mobility of students and employees at their universities and educate their students to become cosmopolitan and responsible European and Global Citizens, who respect and appreciate internationality and interculturality and, based on this, work together on solutions for current challenges facing society.
The FORTHEM network maintains extensive local links in all the home countries of the nine partner universities, some of which have been cooperating for many years and at the same time are open to new forms of collaboration and exchange, with the enduring goal of reinforcing the multilateral European network in its ability to innovate and the close interplay of learning and teaching, research, and practical application.
