Blog for the third mission

There are several commonly accepted ranking systems for the First and Second Missions, which provide indicators to measure excellence in Higher Education Institutions around the world. Rankings improve quality assurance by allowing the institutions to understand their own performance, develop best practices, and provide effective and efficient value to society. They also provide quality indicators to governments, society and industry. However, there are no commonly agreed indicators or methodologies to assess quality in Third Mission activities.

This project will develop such indicators, promoting excellence in Third Mission activities, and encouraging Higher Education Institutions to share best practices across Europe.

Wednesday 30 May 2012

Green Paper on Third Mission

The Green Paper is now available on the project web site 

Universities and Regional Innovation: From Policy to Practice Building Capacity for Collaborative Partnerships


The positive impact of effective regional innovation on economic growth, employment and social stability is recognised everywhere.  The ability to build capacity for collaborative partnerships and to exercise strong leadership in order to bring together a variety of regional stakeholders behind a common regional strategy is "the" critical step for regional success.    

This one-day conference will focus on the challenges involved in building and sustaining successful cross-sectoral partnerships between academic, business and public agencies to support regional innovation. The conference will draw on lessons learned from the EU-Drivers for a Regional Innovation Platform project.

The conference format will be highly interactive, with expert international keynote speakers, panelists and senior representatives from the European Commission.

With practical interactive sessions it will provide participants the opportunity to try out "on the ground" the lessons learnt from the EU-Drivers project; each participant will receive a copy of the EU-Drivers toolkit with good practices to support effective transformational regional innovation.

In our pre-conference reception, networking breakfast and poster sessions, the conference will provide ample opportunities for direct exchange between regional, university and business leaders as well as access to EU policy-makers.

For more information and online registration, please check here.

Friday 25 May 2012

Graduates' Strategy

“ You are not a volunteer and the university is not a charity. You are paid for hours of work; do not exceed them. Teach well, but do not make teaching the core of your identity.“ and....keep smiling :)

Tussle between university rankings and community engagement by Yojana Sharma

Universities that want to engage in regional development, community outreach or even philanthropic support say they first have to overcome the ‘tyranny’ of international university rankings, which mainly value research output and give little credit for helping to transform society, including reducing poverty and inequity.cont. reading