A truly European journey for CIVICA master’s students

24-11-2020

Carlo Altomonte, Professor of Economics of European Integration at Bocconi University, talks us through the design, aims and significance of the ‘Europeanship’ multi-campus course, which will kick off in the academic year 2021/22.

CIVICA partner schools are hard at work fine tuning the ‘Europeanship’ multi-campus course which will kick off in the academic year 2021/22, available to master’s students across the alliance, enabling them to study and work together on the topic of the future of Europe. Carlo Altomonte, Professor of Economics of European Integration at Bocconi University and coordinator of the course, talks 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 in a master’s course on European issues designed and taught jointly by a team of professors from the universities within the alliance. The course will be delivered across all the campuses of the CIVICA alliance, as a series of live online lectures taught by different professors, integrated with local activities. The course will be available to some 500 students across the alliance over the pilot phase. The course will spur students across countries and disciplines to work in teams on an innovative solution to a high-risk societal challenge, which is 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.

Interview conducted by Tomaso Eridani (Bocconi University)

_{Photo credit: Bocconi University}