New spokespersons for SURE!
Beatriz de Sousa Rodrigues and Pau Maza y Díaz will represent Unite! students in future
2022/12/05
SURE! (Students in Unite! for Representation and Empowerment!) has introduced its two new spokespersons coinciding with the new phase of the alliance. They are Beatriz de Sousa Rodrigues, from ULisboa and Pau Maza, student at the Universitat Politècnica de Catalunya · BarcelonaTech (UPC). SURE! is the student representative body of the alliance and as such participates in the Unite! Steering Committee. Unite! SURE! offers students from the nine Unite! partner universities the opportunity to co-create and engage with their peers from other European universities, who can then participate in the decisions and projects implemented by the alliance.
Beatriz de Sousa Rodrigues is a student at the Faculty of Pharmacy of ULisboa, where she is studying for a Master's degree in Pharmaceutical Sciences. Involved in associationism, she is the vice-president of external relations of the local student association and has organized European events for university students. She recently joined SURE! and in doing so, she participated in the Unite! Dialogue in Torino last September.
Pau Maza is a student of Telecommunications Engineering, Audiovisual Systems at the UPC campus in Terrassa (Barcelona). He has participated in different representative bodies in his school and in the University as coordinator of the Student Council, member of the University Senate, of the Development Cooperation Council and the Quality Commission, among others. He has also been a member of the executive committee of the Student Council of Catalonia. Pau is a member of CLUSTER and has been a member of SURE!, since November 2021.
New challenges for students in Unite!
“For this new phase of the alliance students want to lay the foundations for the future of SURE! through the creation of our Founding Statutes and the internal documentation for all the procedures that must take place within SURE!”, comment the new spokespersons, who add that “SURE! must consolidate in the alliance with the aim that students have a more proactive role, participating in initiatives such as the Working Groups of Seed Funds for Student Activities, Research and Doctorate and Teaching and Learning”. For them the future of Unite! “is very promising and we will do our best to maintain the great relationship between all the agencies and SURE!”.
Unite!/mho
About SURE!
SURE! stands for Students in Unite! for Representation and Empowerment, this body provides the opportunity for students to co-create and engage with their companions from the other partner universities of the alliance but also to have a platform in order to voice their needs within the Unite! management structure.
The European Universities Initiative
The European Universities Initiative was launched in 2019 to push for the establishment of a European Education Area by 2025. European Universities are transnational alliances of higher education institutions from across the EU that share a long-term strategy, promoting European values and identity. The initiative is designed to significantly strengthen student and staff mobility and to foster the quality, inclusion and competitiveness of European higher education.
In response to a first call of the Erasmus+ Programme in 2019, the first 17 alliances were selected for a 3-year pilot phase to lay the foundations for future European universities. Unite! has been among these first 17. Another 24 alliances followed in the 2nd call in 2020.
Unite!’s new funding starting end of 2022 falls into the calls of the further roll out of the European Universities Initiative. It plans to increase the number of European Universities to 60 with more than 500 universities by mid-2024, supported under Erasmus+ with an indicative budget of EUR 1.1 billion for the period 2021-2027. The aim is to develop and share a common long-term structural, sustainable and systemic cooperation on education, research and innovation, creating European inter-university campuses where students, staff and researchers from all parts of Europe can enjoy seamless mobility and create new knowledge together, across countries and disciplines.”
