Acceleration Services in support of the institutional transformation of Higher Education Institutions
HORIZON Coordination and Support Actions
Basic Information
- Identifier
- HORIZON-WIDERA-2022-ERA-01-51
- Programme
- European Research Area
- Programme Period
- 2021 - 2027
- Status
- Closed (31094503)
- Opening Date
- January 19, 2022
- Deadline
- April 20, 2022
- Deadline Model
- single-stage
- Budget
- €5,500,000
- Keywords
- AcceleratorsModernisation of Higher EducationCitizen cooperation and reportingInternational cooperationLegal AspectsKnowledge transferArtificial IntelligenceDigital AgendaPolicy & strategyInnovation in learning, teaching and assessment �Open dataEducation and Traininginvestment strategymodernisation of higher educationacceleration servicesynergies education, research, innovationinstitutional transformation
Description
Projects are expected to contribute to the following outcomes in relation to acceleration services in support of the institutional transformation of higher education institutions (HEI):
- A methodology towards acceleration services that can help HEI or alliances/networks of HEIs in pursuing institutional transformations, including a monitoring mechanism to assess quality of the delivered services.
- A coaching service with best practice examples and guidance for individual HEIs as well as networks of HEIs, aligned with the common transformation agenda, facilitating access to finance from various sources.
- Tested acceleration services with user groups (HEI umbrella organisations, individual HEIs, or networks of HEIs, including partners from surrounding ecosystems), supporting HEI or networks of HEIs in developing a strategy to pursue institutional transformations in the field of R&I.
- An investment strategy mechanism, implemented with the user group, facilitating access to funding from national, regional, or EU resources to deliver on the Higher Education Transformation Agenda.
- Progress of the user groups of the acceleration services regarding the implementation of the chosen areas of the transformation agenda, measured through a monitoring mechanism.
- Policy feedback to the European Commission and Member States on the acceleration services, and widespread dissemination of the pilot results to other target groups
The overall aim of the Higher Education Institutions acceleration services is to help institutions to successfully implement a strategy and roadmap for transformation, by creating a shared knowledge base, coaching service and virtual meeting place for them to connect with peers and other ecosystem actors, as well as with investors and public funders. The acceleration services should consist of (i) a coaching and support mechanism for HEIs to pursue institutional transformation in various areas, (ii) a methodology for an investment strategy to facilitate access of higher education institutions and surrounding ecosystem to support to deliver on the chosen transformations, (iii) a monitoring mechanism to assess progress in the transformation efforts. Projects should address all three aspects and test them with user groups.
HEIs, including universities, are crucial drivers of knowledge ecosystems, and increasingly also of innovation ecosystems. The new ERA is expected to strengthen the R&I dimension of HEIs through a comprehensive institutional Higher Education Transformation Agenda in synergy with the European Education Area, reinforcing their role as drivers of change, fostering their recovery, enabling shared objectives between the EU and Member States’ initiatives to support higher education institutions in their efforts to transform on their education, research, innovation and service to society missions. To deliver on the transformation agenda for HEIs a large-scale concerted action in support of the institutional transformation efforts of HEIs will be required, including a standard methodology to develop roadmaps of EU, national and regional actions and investment measures for institutions or alliances.
Projects should build on the results of previous analyses that set out a framework for empowering HEIs across Europe in their research and innovation mission, facilitating ongoing transformation processes based on universities’ needs (“Towards a 2030 Vision on the Future of Universities in the field of research and innovation in Europe”, October 2020[1]), and the analyses performed under the previous Work Programme (in particular the study “Knowledge ecosystems in the new ERA: a comprehensive analysis of the state of play, the design of monitoring mechanisms, and creation of a toolbox of support measures”, 2021).The projects should link and build on the results of the initiative of the European Institute of Innovation and Technology (EIT) on Innovation Capacity Building for Higher Education launched in 2021 that has the objective to unlock the full innovation potential of higher education institutions (HEIs).
The Higher Education Transformation Agenda developed under the previous Work Programme is expected to include the most important priorities and challenges for HEIs regarding institutional transformations towards the future, including (trans)national cooperation with other HEIs, and the growing importance of engagement with a broad range of sectors and societal actors inherent to the multiple dimensions of HEI (education, research, innovation, service to society). Acceleration services should address all possible R&I areas of the Higher Education Transformation Agenda such as: (a) empower HEIs towards developing shared R&I strategies that deliver on Europe’s challenges with critical mass; (b) facilitate the sharing of capacity, infrastructure and resources through collaborative settings, such as the European Universities initiative; (c) improve the attractiveness of researchers’ careers, including through reform of the career assessment and incentives regimes; (d) facilitate co-operation with surrounding R&I ecosystem actors; (e) support the transition to knowledge- and digitally-driven HEIs that mainstream Open Science practices and include research and innovation outputs in teaching; (f) engage citizens in solving societal challenges; (g) support institutional change through inclusive gender equality plans.
Projects are expected to a methodology how to deploy such acceleration services including (i) access to coaches, mentors, expertise and training from academia or outside academia, with different profiles that match with the areas from the transformation agenda, which the project puts at the disposal of individual HEIs or networks of universities in need of institutional transformation in the field of R&I; these experts, coaches, mentors, etc should provide support for (ii) strategy development, (iii) roadmap development, and (iv) mapping of required support resources, as well as provide (v) detailed advice on access to funding from EU, national, and regional sources to allow the HEIs to deliver on the transformations; this should in particular include support and access to financial instruments for excellent research and innovation capacity, and support for disruptive innovation from academic sector, incl. spin-offs from universities and public research organisations, and cooperation agreements between academic and business sector. This should lead to a standard methodology to develop specific investment agendas for individual institutions or networks of HEI that consists of different funding and financial instrument branches, aligned with the priorities and areas of the common transformation agenda, and realising concerted support to the institutional transformation efforts universities want to engage in.
The acceleration services should be piloted together with large user groups (either individual HEI, networks or alliances of universities and surrounding ecosystem actors, or umbrella organisations of HEI), and progress of the users in the implementation of the chosen areas of the transformation agenda should be measured. Actions should therefore include an evaluation mechanism that enables to assess the strategies from individual HEIs or alliances of universities, pursuing institutional transformation towards universities of the future, for instance under supervision of an ‘acceleration board’ of independent experts. The evaluation mechanism should also monitor progress of the HEIs in the implementation of the chosen areas from the transformation agenda.
Projects should disseminate widely the methodology and the results of the pilot with user groups, as well as provide policy recommendations to the Commission and Member States on the acceleration services, in view of future targeted and synergetic actions in support of Higher Education sector.
The duration of the action should not exceed 5 years.
Cross-cutting Priorities:Artificial Intelligence
Digital Agenda
[1]https://op.europa.eu/en/publication-detail/-/publication/a3cde934-12a0-11eb-9a54-01aa75ed71a1/language-en
Destination & Scope
Introduction
Horizon Europe has a new level of ambition – to maximise the impact of EU research and innovation funding for European science, economy and the wider society. It marks a paradigm change in the design of the EU R&I Framework Programmes (FP) from an activity-driven to an impact-driven programme. Coupled to this ambition is the relaunching of the European Research Area (ERA) as described in the recently published Commission Communication entitled A new ERA for Research and Innovation (COM/2020/628 final of 30.09.2020).
The COVID-19 pandemic demonstrates the importance of R&I cooperation to deliver solutions to society’s most demanding needs. Delivering Europe’s recovery is a priority as are the green and digital twin transitions. To match these challenges, a new level of ambition that links better R&I with the economy, as well as with education and training, is necessary to put the EU’s scientific knowledge to work.
The new ERA calls for deepening existing priorities and initiatives through new and stronger approaches. The green and digital transitions and the recovery call for cooperation between the Commission and the Member States. They require the setting of new priorities, launching ambitious joint initiatives and developing common approaches between policies.
To address these requirements, Destination 3 of Annex 11 of the Horizon Europe Work Programme, will support efforts to reform and enhance the EU R&I system. Destination 3 is built around four strands corresponding to the four objectives set out in the ERA Communication: 1. Prioritise investments and reforms; 2. Improve access to excellence; 3. Translate R&I results into the economy and 4. Deepen the ERA. The principle of excellence, meaning that the best researchers with the best ideas that respond best to the societal challenges obtain funding, remains the cornerstone for all investments under the ERA.
Strand 1 recognises the importance of prioritising investments and reforms to accelerate the green and digital transformation and to increase competitiveness as well as the speed and depth of the recovery. It offers support for policy makers and addresses the need for better analysis and evidence, including simplifying and facilitating the inter-play between national and European R&I systems.
Strand 2 addresses the need to improve access to excellence and to increase the performance of R&I systems, building on dedicated Horizon Europe measures as well as complementarities with smart specialisation strategies under the Cohesion Policy.
Strand 3 addresses the importance of translating R&I results into the economy. R&I policies should aim to boost the resilience and competitiveness of our economies and societies.
Strand 4 addresses the challenge of deepening the ERA and includes Open Science, Higher Education and Researchers, Citizen Science, Science Education, Gender and Ethics. It aims at underpinning a new ERA benefiting from knowledge creation, circulation and use. This empowers higher education institutions and research organisations to embrace a transformative process; where a highly skilled workforce circulate freely; where research outputs are shared; where gender equality is assured; where the outcomes of R&I are understood, trusted and increasingly used, by educated informed scientists and citizens to the benefit of society.
Expected impact:
Proposals for topics under this Destination should set out a credible pathway to contributing to the following expected impacts:
- Reform and Enhance the EU R&I system
- Prioritisation of investments and reforms, realisation of the recovery and the twin transitions
- Improved access to excellence
- Greater quality of the scientific production and stronger translation of R&I results into the economy
- Deepen the ERA
- Coordinated national and regional R&I programmes by pooling national resources and contributing to the alignment of national research and innovation policies
- Improved knowledge for policy making about the networking patterns of research support staff and research management
- Synergies between research & innovation and higher education policies and programmes
- Modernised higher education sector, benefitting from targeted transformations in higher education, research, and innovation
- Increased number of interconnected knowledge ecosystems, strong in knowledge creation, circulation and use
- Researchers benefit from attractive careers
- Inclusive gender equality is promoted in the European research and innovation system
- A more open and inclusive research and innovation system
- Increased capacity in the EU R&I system to conduct open science and to set it as a modus operandi of modern science
- Increased engagement of citizens with research and innovation
- Increased alignment of strategic research with society needs, expectations and values
- Identified synergies between second and third level education, and between education and business;
- Increased trust in science and R&I outcomes, and greater two-way communication between science and society
- Knowledge and a highly skilled workforce circulate freely
- Improved capacities within the EU R&I system to conduct open science
- A more open and inclusive research and innovation system
Eligibility & Conditions
General conditions
1. Admissibility conditions: described in Annex A and Annex E of the Horizon Europe Work Programme General Annexes
Proposal page limits and layout: described in Part B of the Application Form available in the Submission System
2. Eligible countries: described in Annex B of the Work Programme General Annexes
A number of non-EU/non-Associated Countries that are not automatically eligible for funding have made specific provisions for making funding available for their participants in Horizon Europe projects. See the information in the Horizon Europe Programme Guide.
3. Other eligibility conditions: described in Annex B of the Work Programme General Annexes
4. Financial and operational capacity and exclusion: described in Annex C of the Work Programme General Annexes
5. Evaluation and award:
- Award criteria, scoring and thresholds are described in Annex D of the Work Programme General Annexes
- Submission and evaluation processes are described in Annex F of the Work Programme General Annexes and the Online Manual
- Indicative timeline for evaluation and grant agreement: described in Annex F of the Work Programme General Annexes
6. Legal and financial set-up of the grants: described in Annex G of the Work Programme General Annexes
Specific conditions
7. Specific conditions: described in the specific topic of the Work Programme.
Documents
Call documents:
Standard application form — call-specific application form is available in the Submission System
Standard application form (HE CSA)
Standard evaluation form — will be used with the necessary adaptations
MGA
Call-specific instructions
Essential Information for Clinical Studies
Additional documents:
HE Main Work Programme 2021–2022 – 1. General Introduction
HE Main Work Programme 2021–2022 – 12. Missions
HE Main Work Programme 2021–2022 – 13. General Annexes
HE Framework Programme and Rules for Participation Regulation 2021/695
HE Specific Programme Decision 2021/764
Rules for Legal Entity Validation, LEAR Appointment and Financial Capacity Assessment
EU Grants AGA — Annotated Model Grant Agreement
Funding & Tenders Portal Online Manual
Support & Resources
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