This year’s General Meeting, held at the University of Bern, once again featured an indispensable delegation of students from the ENLIGHT Student Network (SN), representing all the universities in the alliance. It was remarkable to see that nearly every work package had student representatives actively participating in their respective workshops. The Student Network views this as an incredible opportunity to address various challenges from a student perspective.

What made this meeting in Bern truly special? The ENLIGHT SN Day, where we dedicated an entire day to brainstorming and advancing the Student Network’s initiatives. The day began with two focused sessions: Community and Governance.

In the Community session, discussions revolved around strategies to increase ENLIGHT’s visibility in the institutions, adopt sustainable practices regarding merchandise, and prepare for the upcoming Student Conference in Göttingen. Meanwhile, the Governance team managed both to understand what wasn't working for them and also setting goals for the future; such as the planning of a policy paper focused on knowledge and visibility of the SN within at Alliance level, local level and also internal level or the mapping of the WP tasks that team wants to be active in.

Following the morning sessions, the ENLIGHT SN General Session took place. During this session, we tackled key issues such as improving the Student Network’s internal and external processes, enhancing its “outreach strategy”, and working together to make the ENLIGHT alliance truly unique.

The day concluded in a relaxed atmosphere over fondue, providing a perfect ending to an intensive and productive day. The ENLIGHT SN Day proved to be a fantastic opportunity to refine the functioning of the Student Network, with the added benefit of full representation from all member universities.

What more can we say? It was an amazing three days of hard work and collaboration, leading to decisions and plans that will, we hope, propel the alliance forward.

Challenge-based education (CBE) is a core element of teaching and learning initiatives within ENLIGHT. The focus of CBE is on incorporating real-life cases into the teaching of university courses and working on students' 21st century skills. This is a call for participants in the next edition of the CBE training sessions for educators.

This online training opportunity is targeted towards educators or educational designers who would like to gain deeper insights into theory and practice of CBE. The training team will go over relevant frameworks, examples of previous courses and practice applying these principles with colleagues from the ENLIGHT university network. 

 Am I ready for CBE?

You are ready if you are:

• Committed to student-centred education
• Willing to give up control of the learning process and to trust students to develop their own knowledge with your facilitation
• Experienced in facilitating group and/or team work
• Willing to guide and mentor students

These sessions will be held online with the additional possibility to network, exchange ideas and questions with colleagues from other ENLIGHT universities.

The training has 3 components:

• An asynchronous online path that opens on 21 February 2025. The path requires approximately half a day with the objective of participants gaining familiarity with the concept.
• ZOOM session 1 on 5 March 10:00-12:30 CET – In this session, participants will meet colleagues from the online path in a ZOOM session, reflect on existing knowhow on CBE and design a challenge-based module.
• ZOOM session 2 on 6 March 10:00-12:30 CET –Participants will work in small groups and choose the appropriate teaching tools and techniques to guide and coach students throughout a CBE Module

Please send an expression of interest to the ENLIGHT coordinator at your university before 14 February 2025.

Mervin Bakker, former Director of Internationalisation at the University of Groningen, reflects on his impactful role in shaping ENLIGHT. This alliance of ten European universities has redefined collaboration in higher education, fostering inclusivity and accessibility. In a recent interview, Bakker shared insights into ENLIGHT’s vision, achievements, and its path toward a sustainable future.

Read the full interview here.

Eight weeks ago, 24 students from five of ENLIGHT’s partner universities, embarked on a journey. The first six weeks were spent interacting online, with participants getting to know each other—starting from the basics of everyone's studies, to addressing hard questions such as defining the most pressing issues of our time. Throughout this process, the students formed genuine bonds as they researched and discovered information about the world through a myriad of lenses.

This experience culminated in an on-site week in Bratislava where students solidified their online friendships face-to-face and worked on techniques to make their voices heard. The final course project, the symposium “ENLIGHT Intellect: The NextGen Symposium on Critical Thinking in Tackling Global Issues" required each student to give a talk showcasing a novel idea stemming from their group’s research. The talks were impressive, and the forum for a comfortable and honest exchange of ideas was possible due to the atmosphere of familiarity that had been built starting with the first online meeting.

Throughout the entire process, students underwent critical thinking—revising their views, analyzing and synthesizing information, applying reasoning, and more. In the end, both the students and the educators walked away empowered, having expanded their own lenses about the discussed topics and honed their skills on how to broadcast their ideas effectively to the world.

Blended Intensive Course Fostering Critical Thinking Skills 2024 was hosted by Comenius University and involved lecturers from University of Göttingen, Université de Bordeaux and Comenius University.

Topic: Repositories for a Sustainable, Equitable, and Innovative Open Access Publishing

Date: 13 January 2025

Time: 10:00 - 11:30 AM (CET)

Since their inception, repositories have played a crucial role in Open Access, but challenges with commercial and fee-based models have highlighted the need for community-driven solutions. This webinar, featuring Eloy Rodrigues, will present strategies by COAR, OpenAIRE, LIBER, and SPARC Europe to strengthen repositories and promote innovative practices like the Publish-Review-Curate model and overlay journals. Join us to explore how repositories can foster sustainable and equitable publishing.

More information: here

Registration: Click here to register

 We are happy to welcome Leah Vandeveer as interim Executive Secretary for ENLIGHT! Leah will take up her new role from January until July 2025. During this time, the Directors Board and Governing Board will develop a strategy to review our current governance model. They will also prepare an open call for potential new roles resulting from this reform, which is set to launch by summer 2025.

Leah comes from within the ENLIGHT Family, having been the Project Manager for RISE, the R&I dimension of our alliance, with the University of Bordeaux in 2024.  

We would like to take this opportunity to express our gratitude to Gijs Coucke for his pioneering work with ENLIGHT over the past five years. We wish him the best of luck in his new endeavor!

At the General Meeting in Bern, 140 members of the ENLIGHT discussed our long-term vision for the alliance and how to embed it in each member university. 

The ENLIGHT Green Network is excited to introduce the Sustainable Travel Policy, a significant step in promoting environmentally conscious travel across ENLIGHT partner universities. Committed to fostering sustainable practices, ENLIGHT encourages its community to adopt sustainable travel habits for both business travel and student mobility.

This initiative promotes responsible travel choices within the ENLIGHT community, aligning with the European Union's dedication to the United Nations' 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). By supporting these goals and advancing the green transition, the policy aims to reduce carbon emissions and encourage more environmentally friendly mobility practices across the ENLIGHT community.

ENLIGHT is pleased to announce the next Face of ENLIGHT: Yushi Liu

Yishu Liu, a PhD student at the University of Galway, is pioneering soft robotics for insulin delivery. Originally from Changsha, China, Yishu chose Galway as the first step in her international academic journey. Earlier this year, she participated in the ENLIGHT Bio Design course in Uppsala, Sweden, where she gained valuable experience in medical device development and interdisciplinary teamwork. Outside the lab, Yishu enjoys running, traveling, and drawing inspiration from books like The Wisdom of Life by Arthur Schopenhauer.

Read the full interview on the Faces of ENLIGHT page and stay tuned for more interviews to come!

Save the date! The second ENLIGHT Impact Conference is happening at the University of Groningen on 27 & 28 March 2025! Join us at this two-day event where academics, management staff and impact experts and practitioners , will come together to discuss impact in the university context..

There will be a series of roundtables, workshops, pitches and networking opportunities where participants will be able to exchange and discuss approaches for embedding impact within Universities, being in education, in research, in innovation or in service to society activities..

Additionally, the ENLIGHT Impact Awards will be presented to recognise and give visibility to endeavors at ENLIGHT universities that are exemplars in planning for and achieving impact. Don’t miss this opportunity to engage in and promote impact while learning from and networking with your peers!

Please check our 2025 Impact Conference webpage for more information.

As part of the Regional Academy initiative, a lecture by David Králik—a renowned teacher, mentor, and co-founder of the Felix School—was held on December 3, 2024, at Comenius University. During his session with students enrolled in Introduction to Pedagogy, he shared practical teaching methods that can enhance their future classroom practices. The discussion focused on creating a positive classroom atmosphere, structuring lessons effectively, and incorporating reflective practices post-lesson.

Students specializing in pedagogy and teaching, with combinations of English, Slovak, and history, had the opportunity to engage in hands-on activities that highlighted the importance of enjoyable learning experiences.

David Králik, the author of several successful books for children and parents, is currently mentoring and supervising educators through the Individual Teacher Development Programme (IRPU). His lecture was organized by Gabriela Pleschová from the Centre for Educational Support at the Faculty of Arts, Comenius University.

The ENLIGHT RISE project, the R&I component of ENLIGHT which started in 2021, officially closed on 31 August 2024. This October, the RISE partners met one last time in Bordeaux to put the finishing touches on their final report and prepare for their Final Review with the European Commission. With the RISE report submitted at the end of October, the RISE team came together to participate in their successful Final Review with in November, with the European Commission commending the team for its deliverables and the management of the project.