European university alliance fostering inclusion by sharing tools and good practices

CHARM-EU Alliance: Enhances European higher education inclusiveness and mobility. Focuses on creating inclusive environments and removing barriers. Provides free tools benefiting students, staff, and stakeholders worldwide.

CHARM-EU Alliance aims to promote mobility, inclusiveness, and competitiveness in the area of European higher education. Among its complex mission, it focuses on creating an inclusive environment and removing barriers for students, participatory processes, staff training, reasonable accommodation, assistive technology, curricula, change of culture, and more. Many tools, such as curricula design and admission policies, have been created and provided free of charge so as to benefit students, staff, and stakeholders globally.

Problems Targeted

Many people, including persons with disabilities, face structural barriers and discrimination to access and participate in higher education.

Solution, Innovation and Impact

CHARM-EU was initiated in 2019 by the University of Barcelona, Trinity College Dublin, Utrecht University, Eötvös Loránd University, and University of Montpellier to pilot a new inter-European university. Aligned with the Global European Values and United Nations Sustainable Development Goals, the new CHARM-EU has been created as a test model and seeks to become a leading example of good practice to foster mobility, inclusiveness, quality, and competitiveness across higher education in Europe. CHARM-EU also offers a Master’s degree, with students being part of the co-creation and innovation process. Students attend lectures in one of the five CHARM-EU partner universities and connect online to the other campuses over the 18 months of the Master’s programme. The curriculum tool, for instance, features a teaching and learning strategy handbook, an assessment handbook, content guidelines, a curriculum design blueprint, and a sustainability guidebook. Inclusivity tools contain the key findings of an inclusion survey, a collection of good practices, an inclusivity plan, as well as inclusivity tips for educators. Additional feature are a needs assessment and an inclusivity statement. All toolkits are freely available to download in six languages. By 2023 the CHARM-EU Alliance had some 500 individuals involved across the nine partner universities.

Funding, Outlook and Transferability

CHARM-EU is funded by an Erasmus+ Grant from the European Union. In 2023, CHARM-EU is a consortium consisting of eight countries, including nine public higher education institutions: the University of Barcelona, Trinity College Dublin, Utrecht University, Eötvös Loránd University, the University of Montpellier, Åbo Akademi University, Julius-Maximilians University Würzburg and Hochschule Ruhr West, and Bergen University. The consortium is designed to share practices that can be replicated as easily as possible by its member universities and by universities globally, considering their context. (Awardee 2024)

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CHARM-EU is a pilot project for an inter-European university for inclusive higher education.

CHARM-EU is a pilot project for an inter-European university for inclusive higher education.

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