A Truly European Journey for CIVICA Master's Students
CIVICA PARTNER SCHOOLS ARE HARD AT WORK TO FINE TUNE 'EUROPEANSHIP', THE MULTICAMPUS COURSE THAT KICKS OFF IN 2021/22 AND IS AVAILABLE TO GRADUATE STUDENTS ACROSS THE ALLIANCE, SO THAT THEY CAN STUDY AND WORK TOGETHER ON THE SUBJECT OF EUROPE'S FUTURE. INTERVIEW WITH CARLO ALTOMONTE, COURSE COORDINATORCarlo Altomonte, Professor of Economics of European Integration at Bocconi University and coordinator of the course, takes us through the design, aims and significance of the course.
How would you describe the Europeanship course and what is its significance for CIVICA?
The ‘Europeanship’ multi-campus course is one of the flagship initiatives of CIVICA. It consists of a Master’s course on European issues designed and taught jointly by a team of professors from the universities belonging to the alliance. The course will be delivered as a series of online lectures taught by various professors across all the institutions of the CIVICA alliance, to be streamed live and integrated with local activities. The course will be available to some 500 students across the alliance in the pilot phase. The course is set to spur students across countries and disciplines to work in teams on innovative solutions to deal with high-risk societal challenges, something they will lay out in the course’s final assignment.
How are you designing the course (content, format etc.) and what are some of the challenges?
The course will be available from the academic year 2021/22, starting in the Fall semester 2021, and will have as a main topic the “Future of Europe.” To that end, the course will have an introduction taught by Professor Enrico Letta of Sciences Po, four modules taught by top academics at Hertie School, Bocconi, SSE, CEU and LSE, covering the topics of Globalisation, Digitalisation, Green Transition, and Democracy and Institutions, and a final module wrapping up all the contents, again taught by Sciences Po. Each module will contain four synchronous, live online classes, plus Introduction and Conclusions. Additional activities at each campus will complement the course content so as to fit with each school’s requirements. The final evaluation of the course will be based on a group capstone project, to be developed by student teams across campuses.
Clearly the main challenge with such a course, never attempted before across European universities, is organisational, but we are already at a fairly advanced stage in the design of the course. All partners are working on it with a lot of enthusiasm and great ideas.
What can students expect from the Europeanship course once it is implemented?
Our idea is that students should be able to experience the unique opportunity of having direct interaction with some of the top academics specialised in European issues across different countries and institutions, in order to produce a truly ‘European’ debate. Students will also be able to work directly with fellow colleagues from other campuses to complete the capstone project at the end of the course, another formative experience.
This interview was originally published on the website of CIVICA – The European University of Social Sciences
by Tomaso Eridani
