Universities-Communities: strengthening cooperation

ongoing

This project aims the elaboration of the policy of the Ministry of Education and Science of Ukraine on enhancing the third mission of Ukrainian Universities and fostering best practices of cooperation between HEIs and communities based on the application of the relevant experiences of EU states (Italy, Germany, Sweden, Czech Republic and Latvia). A set of activities is developed focusing on enhancing universities’ social role and boosting university-community engagement incorporating efficient models of interaction between the communities and universities developed to ensure social cohesion, resilience and sustainability. The project activities include the development of policy options on enhancing the third mission of universities in Ukraine based on actual research of approaches towards governance models of universities’ third missions; in-depth analysis of community and universities needs in Eastern, Northern, Southern, and Western Ukraine; capacity-building for Ukrainian HEIs staff through the development of professional exchange program focusing on such important aspects of the community-university cooperation as resilience, sustainability, inclusion, entrepreneurship and environment, public health, and social cohesion, development and piloting of concepts of university-community cooperation at Ukrainian partner HEIs and development a policy paper and roadmap on state policy on enhancing the cooperation between communities and universities. The main project results are: Guidelines for the Ministry of Education on University Third Mission; a research paper “Models of the Community-University Cooperation in Ukraine”, 3 workshops on research methodology, intra-consortium mobilities aiming to study and share the best practices in partner institutions, 3 roundtables and focus groups on the third mission of universities with MESU, Ministry of Regional Development of Ukraine, communities and other stakeholders; development and piloting of national models of uni