When one chapter closes another begins
CIVIS has just turned one, and a lot has happened in this first year!
A year of celebration? Of course! A year of great accomplishments? Certainly! An unexpected and challenging year? No doubt about that.
2019-2020 has been an intensive, challenging year, yet a year we can all be proud of. The pandemic has caused unprecedented disruptions in our society and in many sectors, including Higher Education.
Our universities were forced to rethink their activities in a very short amount of time and swiftly think about the upcoming academic year to accommodate the changing needs and rapidly evolving safety recommendations for our students and university staff.
With courses moving from the bench to the internet, our teachers and students experienced a complete shift to digital learning.
Moving forward, our universities saw these difficult times as an opportunity to rethink global cooperation in higher education and research. Several webinars and meetings were held over the last months on digital learning and virtual mobility. Our teams on student mobility and innovative pedagogies worked together to offer new blended learning courses for students and new initiatives such as digital languages cafes bloomed within the alliance.
As our new CIVIS president, Prof Marian Preda said:
"I see CIVIS as it was always meant to be: an extraordinary alliance created as a medium of inclusiveness and high quality in education. A body that brings together eight universities from eight European countries, all leading research institutions and extremely valuable educational organizations in their respective countries. During this pandemic, inside CIVIS, we rediscovered how similar our personal, institutional and national experiences have been, and realized that some problems are universal and that solutions that are viable for the entire consortium can only happen if we intensify our collaboration and create together projects that are adapted to the new reality of our world."