Europe is facing seven social challenges that need fresh ideas – and here you come into play! On the NICE programme 2021, you’ll work through virtual toolkits in entrepreneurship and intercultural communication to solve a global challenge in a team from around Europe. Eventually, your team can showcase your innovative solution at the virtual summer school. Joining NICE, you’ll gain hands-on experience and in-demand skills while making a global contribution! This multi-university virtual programme running from March to July 2021 is offered to you by the Intercultural LearningLab, University of Göttingen. Find out more here: https://www.nice-eu.org

The Erasmus + project CaST focuses on how universities can work more effectively and more inclusively within their city communities by providing students with opportunities to work on local societal challenges. UGent is partner in the project and is happy to invite ENLIGHT colleagues to the Communities and Students Together(CaST) first symposium on Community Engaged Learning.
This free, online event will be an opportunity for the CaST Partners to share the first 2 outputs on Community Engaged Learning with colleagues and the wider community, and also to learn from other experts in the field, to help us plan and optimise our Engaged Learning pilot projects which are currently under development. The symposium will take place on Thursday 25th February 2021 from 10:00 until 16:00 CET.

The current pandemic poses unprecedented challenges for international cooperation, exchange and mobility but at the same time accelerates the digitalization in various parts of our professional and private lives. Both developments are important to science and higher education and can be used as an opportunity to form new sustainable approaches that use digitalization to improve internationalization at universities.

This is why on 23 to 24 March 2021 the University of Göttingen and the University of Tartu, with suport from the ENLIGHT partners, will jointly host a virtual conference on the topic of "The Impact of Digitisation on Internationalisation: Challenges and Opportunities for the Future of Universities".

Not registered yet? You can register during the whole kick-off week. Or subscribe to our Youtube channel to watch the live-streams. Stay updated about the programme via #ENLIGHTkickoff.

From 1 until 5 March the ENLIGHT European University organizes its official kick-off week. During the kick-off week ENLIGHT offers a fully online programme, comprising work sessions, public lecture sessions on the ENLIGHT focus areas and evening events, each hosted by one of the nine ENLIGHT partners. Join one of our virtual coffee breaks and meet one of your fellow ENLIGHT colleagues, get to know more about ENLIGHT projects in our showcase sessions and post your ideas on one of the message boards!  

The kick-off week brings together academics, experts and students of all ENLIGHT universities, as well as renowned external speakers from various fields. Our keynote speakers are:

Mariya Gabriel	Herman Van Rompuy	Monika Froehler	Veronica Manfredi	Irina Bokova

Browse through the full programme and register now! Follow us via #ENLIGHTkickoff 

The government of Slovakia has granted Comenius University in Bratislava an additional funding of 143 000 euro for ENLIGHT. The Slovak Ministry of Education published a special call for proposals for universities participating in the European Universities Initative in October 2020, after the success of projects with Slovak participation in the European Universities call of 2020. Three institutions worked together to submit a joint proposal.

ENLIGHT RISE, R&I dimension of the ENLIGHT alliance, has passed evaluation phase with a successful score of 13/15 and been invited to grant preparation by the European Commission Research Executive Agency in the context of the Horizon 2020 - SwafS Framework Programme (H2020-IBA-SwafS-Support-2-2020).

The University of Göttingen, as a member of the European University ENLIGHT, succeeded in getting funding from the German Academic Exchange Agency (DAAD) for 750.000 € for the expansion of European structures.

The DAAD is supporting the project „ENLIGHT Transform“, which is intended to strengthen and complement the activities of the university network for a period of three years. The aim of the DAAD initiative is to support the international activities of German universities who, together with their European partners, were successful with their application to be recognized as a “European University”.

It’s probably the biggest challenge of the 21st century: the climate crisis. How we can adapt to these consequences was the main subject of the Climate Adaptation Week on 19th to 25th January 2021 in Groningen. 

In the summer course Innovation Game, presented by Uppsala University and EIT Health, the students will face real health challenges and meet them with serious game design – game principles aiming beyond entertainment.

The Global Engagement and Empowerment Forum (GEEF) is organized by ENLIGHT's associated partner Ban Ki-moon Centre for Global Citizens and is co-hosted with Yonsei University's Institute of Global Engagement & Empowerment (IGEE) and the Ban Ki-moon Foundation for a Better Future in Seoul.

On Tuesday 26th of February the student representatives of all nine ENLIGHT universities elected the first  Student Board. The Student Board takes the lead of the ENLIGHT Student Network through their first term in history.

The physicist Professor Metin Tolan will become the next President of the University of Göttingen. The Senate of the University unanimously agreed this decision today. The University Foundation Committee also approved this proposal unanimously. Tolan succeeds Professor Reinhard Jahn, who held the office until 31 December 2020. Since that time, full-time Vice-President Dr. Valérie Schüller has been Acting President of the University on an interim basis. Tolan's term of office is expected to begin in the spring.