Annual meeting of the strategic alliance of Catholic universities at the URL

Wednesday, 6 November 2019. Last week the rectorate of the Ramon Llull University (URL) brought together some of the leading Catholic or Christian-inspired universities from around the world which just one year ago signed an alliance in Lisbon to bolster the cooperation and visibility of the research-intensive Catholic universities within the international university context.

The key representatives of eight higher education institutions from five continents grouped together under the name of SACRU (Strategic Alliance of Catholic Research Universities), came to Barcelona on 30 and 31 October to hold the first annual meeting of the network. These universities are: the Australian Catholic University (Australia), Boston College (USA), Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile (Chile), Pontifícia Universidade Católica do Rio de Janeiro (Brazil), Sophia University (Japan), Universidade Católica Portuguesa (Portugal), Università Cattolica del Sacro Cuore (Italy) and the Ramon Llull University (Spain).

Fifty people, including rectors, vice-chancellors, directors and their teams, came together at this international meeting at which the short-term and long-term strategy of the SACRU was discussed along with its governance model. The debate began with a consensus on the objectives, mission, vision and values of the alliance. Other more technical aspects were discussed, addressing themes such as the admission criteria or the legal status of the alliance itself.

When it was set up in October 2018, the signatory universities expressed their willingness to enhance the research, cooperation and exchange activities of students and teaching staff, as well as joint training programmes. This first working meeting therefore dedicated a whole day to two specific workshops.

The first of these, the research workshop, focused on sharing the main lines of research of the member universities of the alliance, while exploring possible joint research projects in the fields of interest of all the members. The debate revolved the theme of the Human Dimension of the Environment (security, rights, health, nutrition) and the large number of research experts from the various universities worked in a group to identify the complementary research projects performed in any one of the eight universities, detected connections in specific areas, went into greater detail as to how to increase knowledge and resources on critical research topics, and also identified strategies to enhance research and joint publications to  improve the visibility and reputation of the participating universities in a tangible way.

The second workshop, which focused on sharing best practices concerning the internationalisation strategy, involved International Relations staff and their teams who took it in turns to share their experiences of the international strategy currently being carried out by the various member universities.

At the end of the meetings, all the members signed a joint statement to publicise the future priorities of the SACRU.  This statement indicated that the members agreed to hold the next annual conference in Milan in October 2020, which will be hosted by the Cattolica Università del Sacro Cuore.