The University of Tours is a member of the European university NEOLAIA

In December 2021, the University of Tours officially joined the NEOLAIA alliance, which was awarded the European University label in the call for proposals launched by the European Commission in 2023.

Some background on the European university concept...

In 2017, the European Union affirmed its desire to encourage the emergence of networks of universities located in several European countries, enabling students to study in several countries and in several languages. These networks will also be places conducive to educational innovation and research into excellence.
In practical terms, each alliance of European universities will have a common strategy for education, research and innovation, and will form a genuine European campus where mobility for all (students, teachers, staff) is facilitated.
This initiative has two major objectives: 

• to promote shared values and thus strengthen the European identity;
• to boost the attractiveness and competitiveness of universities in Europe.

Two calls for Erasmus+ projects have led to the creation of the first 41 European universities, funded for an initial four-year exploratory phase. After 17 projects were selected in 2019, then 24 in 2020, these calls for projects have enabled 41 alliances of European higher education institutions to be formed. The two calls launched in 2022 and 2023 have increased this number to 50, enabling 39 of the alliances already approved to be renewed and 11 new ones to be recognised.

NEOLAIA

NEOLAIA was created in May 2019 as a strategic collaboration between universities in Spain, Germany, the Czech Republic and Sweden.
Since then, the consortium has grown, incorporating new universities from Italy, France, Lithuania, Romania and Cyprus.

The NEOLAIA alliance now brings together 9 European universities:

• Bielefeld Universität, Germany
• Universidad de Jaén, Spain
• Örebro Universitet, Sweden
• Ostravska Universita, Czech Republic
• Università degli Studi di Salerno, Italy
• Universitatea Stefan cel Mare Suceava, Romania
• University of Nicosia, Cyprus
• Siauliai Valstybiné Kolegija, Lithania
• Université de Tours, France

What all these universities have in common is that they are relatively young, medium-sized institutions that are strongly integrated into their social and economic environment.  

3 themes are at the heart of the NEOLAIA project:
> diversity and inclusion
> Mobility to strengthen European citizenship;
> digital transformation.

1 disciplinary focus: the challenges of Global Health
 

As the winner of the 2023 call for proposals, the NEOLAiA alliance will receive €14.4 million in funding from the European Commission, including €1.6 million for the University of Tours, for a period of 4 years.

 

The role of the university of Tours in the project

The Université de Tours will be involved in all the activities of the project, which will run from 2024 to 2028 and cover every facet of the university: teaching and research, of course, but also the establishment of common governance for the alliance, the construction of a policy of shared diversity and inclusion, the development of student and staff mobility, the development of Plurilingualism, entrepreneurship, open science and digital transformation.

The University of Tours will have a more central role in coordinating activities in the fields of teaching (development of joint degrees, organisation of summer schools, dissemination of innovative teaching practices such as NewTeAch), research (creation of a network of research support staff, dissemination of Living Labs), plurilingualism (organisation of a conference on language policy, drafting of a joint charter) and entrepreneurship (organisation of a summer school).
 

Collaborations already underway

The alliance partners did not wait for the label to be awarded to develop cooperation. NEOLAIA offers an ideal framework for developing original collaborations between strategic and trusted partners.

Numerous Erasmus agreements have already been signed with the partners to encourage student and staff mobility.
 

The University of Tours took part in the first hybrid programme (Blended Intensive Programme) on inclusive teaching involving a teacher and students from the Sodilang master's programme. After following distance learning courses, the participants met in Bielefeld for a week in March 2023 with colleagues from other universities in the alliance.
 

Research collaborations are already being developed in the fields of biomedicine, child abuse (Unesco Chair), law, plurilingualism and history.

The NEOLAIA student network has already begun its activities, with two initial meetings in January 2022 in Tours and in March 2023 in Bielefeld. Two trainees, one from the University of Örebro and the other from the University of Tours, have been working on the governance of the network and have been cross-mobilised within the international relations departments of the two universities.

Several staff exchanges took place: two doctoral students from the IAE took part in a Staff Week on entrepreneurship in Suceava and one MOIP staff member in a Staff Week in Ostrava on support for students with special needs, Erasmus exchanges for LEA and Psychology colleagues in Örebro.