Presentation of EU-CONEXUS School Contest and other highlights from the CHARM-EU Conference

One EU-CONEXUS trademark projects was selected for the 2023 CHARM-EU Conference, hosted by Julius-Maximilians Universität Würzburg, Germany on November 7. This annual event brings together local and regional stakeholders from industry, business, government and NGOs to discuss their collaboration with EU university alliances. CHARM-EU also invites Erasmus+ representatives, higher education institutions and alliances from across the EU to shape the future of research and collaboration across the EU.

Some of the main discussion points included:

• The impact of university alliances at a local and regional level;
• Erasmus+ perspective on the future of university alliances;
• Shaping the future of research and education in EU universities. 

The university was represented by Lavinia Turcu, EU-CONEXUS Communication and External Relations Coordinator at UTCB (Technical University of Civil Engineering Bucharest). Lavinia took part in the poster session with EU-CONEXUS International School Contest “Think Smart, Create Green”, which is a part of the EU-CONEXUS University to School Programme. During this session, she covered the concept of the University to School Programme, highlighting the greater mission and the structural aspects of EU-CONEXUS efforts.

In short, the main objectives of this Programme are to:

• Raise awareness about SmUCS topics and Careers;
• Develop the EU-CONEXUS community/ecosystem;
• Encourage students’ civic engagement and responsible citizenship by helping them develop SmUCS skills;
• Promote open science and open education;
• Use challenge-based approaches to work across disciplines.

Lavinia also participated in two thematic workshops: “How can challenge-based learning work with external stakeholders to solve grand societal challenges?” and “Setting common transdisciplinary research agendas to foster research impact”. The former event encouraged the participants to explore the alignment between external stakeholders and Challenge Based Learning, and reimagine this pedagogical approach as a tool for boosting stakeholder engagement, teaching innovation, and fostering collaboration. The latter event explored research methods and stakeholder objectives with the goal of establishing common research agendas within European Universities that respond to their close societal context needs.

For full event programme and more information about this conference, visit can be accessed here.