Universidad de Zaragoza José Antonio Mayoral Murillo

UNIVERSIDAD DE ZARAGOZA

José Antonio Mayoral Murillo

Rector Universidad de Zaragoza

The University of Zaragoza was convinced, from the very beginning, of the importance of taking part in the European Universities Initiative, an ambitious programme aimed at building a more integrated and better Europe for the next generations. We accept the challenge of introducing deep transformations in our formative model, including a more person-centered and inclusive education, new modalities of lifelong learning as micro-credentials, and the promotion of multilingualism at all levels, resorting to new methods as inter-comprehension (esp. among Romance languages). We want to give an additional boost to our deep commitment to promote innovative economic and social changes in our regions, particularly in our rural mountain cross-border territories. Anyway, the deepest transformative impact in our institution is the progressive assimilation of the idea that we must progress towards forms of closer interuniversity collaboration and integration. The changes prompted by our participation in the UNITA alliance will change the vision of our main missions: training, research, and innovation, strengthening the concept of European citizenship as a cornerstone of university life. Regarding education, the integration of the offer of the UNITA universities will allow us to build flexible self-tailored learning paths for our students, favoured by virtual, blended, and physical, long, and short mobilities. Rural mobility, an original initiative of our University successfully introduced in our alliance, is about promoting the presence of European students in not very populated rural

areas, thus enhancing in them the European feeling of belonging, offering students new internship possibilities, and contributing to the transformation of our territories.

Research is also being favoured: new clusters of research groups in the initial interest areas (Circular Economy, Renewable Energies and Cultural Heritage) are already a reality, and parallel initiatives as the Re-Unita project (SwafS) will help to optimize the use of our equipment. Furthermore, we are generating new joint research activities and joint PhDs. Knowledge transfer and entrepreneurship are also clue for the alliance: we plan to establish a new Joint Innovation Hub, sharing ideas and promoting interuniversity initiatives opened to a wider European market and focusing on the transformation of our rural territories.

We are aware that the UNITA alliance should be more than a sum of several individual universities sharing research and education programmes: we should be able to build a new structure with its own Governance body. We are committed to show to our staff and students the benefits of these deep changes, and we are starting to explore innovative options in this direction that will need the support of legal innovations at the European level, paving the way for a true common governance: our firm commitment is to identify barriers and to propose initiatives to overcome them.