Mission and Vision
EULiST represents a University of universities, flexible, multilingual, supported by digital transformation, research-based and challenge-focused, specifically on climate change, social cohesion and equity. Co-created as a model European university and in line with European values of equity and sustainable development goals.
“European University.Our present, your future”
Our Mission
EULiST lives its mission to form a European University, based on European values, a common identity and responding to key global challenges in order to rebuild societal trust in technology, boost climate action and reinforce social cohesion – based on our present, for your future.
As universities, we have the responsibility to address the challenges that humanity is facing in everything we do, from education to research, innovation and societal outreach. This requires a major transformation: ensuring that our campuses become carbon-neutral, enabling true inter- and transdisciplinarity and integrating new perspectives by cooperating among our universities; while connecting with our stakeholders and partners from civil society, economy, culture and politics, for instance in cooperation clusters and joint innovation centres in EULiST Regions.
To achieve this, we have defined a guiding principle and chosen a clear focus based on sustainability: interlinking knowledge in Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics STEM together with Social Sciences and Humanities (SSH) to develop solutions to the major societal challenges of today and tomorrow, in particular climate change and the risks to social cohesion. This includes the major technological challenges like Artificial Intelligence (AI), machine learning and (big) data science.
Climate action is for us more than a unifying ambition, but demonstrates how EULiST will transform and prepare our universities for a sustainable future in terms of campus life, education, research, innovation, outreach and internationalisation. At the same time, securing social cohesion is both a prerequisite for and a consequence of climate mitigation as well as adaptation. True sustainable development therefore needs to consider ecological, economical and societal goals (SDGs).
EULiST will thus serve as an intermediary and generator of knowledge and innovation, empowering responsible change agents by laying out career paths for students, scholars and researchers contributing to societal and technological developments. The Alliance will thus have a direct impact on SMEs and start-ups and represent an opportunity for the development of communities. To this end, EULiST strives to build a unique, creative and inclusive academic ecosystem inspired by the reciprocities and synergies between all disciplines and recognizing the importance of trust between society and technology.
EULiST’s unique and creative academic ecosystem at the intersection of society, technology and responsibility, grounded in European core values.
Our Vision
From the heart of Europe’s metropolitan areas to peripheral rural regions, our diversity and complementarity drives our ambition. Each of our campuses is deeply embedded in its local ecosystem, connected to the regional and national society and deeply integrated in the European Community.
By linking our campuses, EULiST connects territories and communities and their rich social, cultural, technological and economic knowledge and experience. By integrating perspectives from the social and technical sciences and boosting challenge-based learning, EULiST fosters innovation to build a more sustainable and globally engaged Europe and trains future generations of students, researchers, scholars and life-long learners to develop solutions to the major challenges of today and tomorrow, notably climate change, digital transition and social cohesion.
Our shared European values enable us to develop a unique approach within our institutional and individual diversity. This methodology provides an added value for the community of all European University Alliances to develop joint approaches to societal challenges, in particular to the climate crisis and social disruption.
At EULiST, we combine our strengths in technology and impactful research to propose an approach that focuses on innovative, yet practical and quickly implementable solutions by integrating both universities of technology and comprehensive universities. This enables us to act as a model for and form hubs with other European Universities for synergies. By embedding social sciences and humanities at the heart of the technological solutions and innovations that we develop and create, we aim to ensure that they are not only socially acceptable but also truly driven by a social vision to address various societal and global challenges. EULiST thereby uses the STEAM approach of blending the knowledge generated by STEM with that of other fields of study, in particular SSH programmes, to address particularly environmental and social challenges with the use of transversal skills, such as creative problem-solving, critical thinking and a dialogue with societal actors.
The European University of the Future