On October 14-16, the UNIgreen European University Alliance held the working meeting of the Join International Centre (JIC) at the Agricultural University of Iceland (AUI).
UNIgreen, the green European University, is an alliance of 8 higher education institutions from across Europe, and UNIgreen’s focus on the fields of Sustainable Agriculture, Green Biotechnology, and Environmental and Life Sciences is at the core of the Alliance.
The Alliance is transitioning from the initial period when it worked hard on establishing the foundations of its collaboration, creating strong bonds between its eight institutions and academic communities. Many challenges still lie ahead of us, challenges that are common for similar European Universities or academic networks, but nothing that can’t be solved by dedicated collaboration and joint will.
The first day at Harpa Conference Centre in Reykjavík offered an overview of the Alliance’s achievements and steps taken towards the ultimate goal of becoming the leading European University in our domain.
Debates and meetings continued for the next two days when over 100 participants moved to the main AUI campus at Hvanneyri.
Key topics on the agenda included strengthening cooperation in research projects between the Alliance members through the Joint Research Centre, introducing the UNIgreen Internationalisation Strategy, and developing new joint and double degree study programmes at bachelor’s, master’s and PhD levels.
Newly formed UNIgreen Clusters of researchers, students and representatives of businesses at each member institution are promising closer links with local communities, impact on the regional level and improved readiness of UNIgreen graduates for the quickly developing labour market.
With many exciting projects ahead, including initiatives on the further development of start-up incubators enhancing student entrepreneurship, UNIgreen is eager to use the momentum from the JIC meeting to further expand and deepen our partnerships and initiatives.
One of the significant outcomes of our event in Iceland was the reached agreement regarding more frequent meetings of the UNIgreen Management Panel with the aim to improve horizontal and also vertical communication within the Alliance.
It was rewarding to see the 8 universities continue to grow together as a UNIgreen family, working toward shared goals and fulfillment of our common mission and vision.
In addition to the working meetings the group had the opportunity to visit the three university farms; the dairy barn, sheephouse and equine centre and speak with the farm managers on site.
The guests were also offered a sightseeing tour in the surrounding area of the campus that included sights of glaciers, mountains, rivers and hot springs, there was even a sighting of northern lights on the first evening. The group had a look around the historical buildings in the old campus centre and visited the Agricultural Museum and the Agronomy centre ending in a feast of local food and music in the university’s sports hall and cantina.
