Joint degrees, a common research agenda, a shared virtual campus — EUNICoast's academic ambitions are real and growing. But for any of them to land, they need to be adopted, resourced and championed inside each of the alliance's partner universities. That's the work of the Boards of Vice-Rectors.
In Dubrovnik this week, Vice-Rectors for Education and for Research & Innovation met across two full days of sessions — separately and together — to translate the alliance's shared vision into decisions that will shape what students and researchers experience at their home institutions.
Building joint programmes
The Vice-Rectors for Education dedicated significant time to the development of joint educational programmes across the alliance. These aren't hypothetical: EUNICoast is actively designing Blended Intensive Programmes, micro-credentials and joint degrees that draw on the expertise of multiple partner universities at once.
The conversations in Dubrovnik focused on the practical side of that ambition — how to align curricula across different national systems, how to structure mobility opportunities, and how to ensure that new learning pathways connect meaningfully to the alliance's coastal and maritime thematic priorities.
Giving the Common Research Agenda institutional roots
In parallel, Vice-Rectors for Research & Innovation continued work on the EUNICoast Common Research Agenda — the framework that will guide collaborative research across the alliance through 2028. The Teaching & Research Hubs have done the thematic groundwork; the Vice-Rectors' role is to ensure that each institution is genuinely committed to and resourced for that agenda.
"The 11 March session was a key milestone in the development of the Common Research Agenda. For the first time, all T&R Hub Coordinators presented their research proposals directly to the Vice-Rectors for Research & Innovation — and the exchange was a genuine two-way conversation. The Vice-Rectors brought the institutional perspective: ensuring that the research lines being developed across the Hubs reflect the priorities and strengths of each partner university. The Hubs are now refining their frameworks on that basis, and the first complete version of the CRA will follow shortly. It's the process working as it should — research expertise and institutional leadership, aligned."
Daniel Pacheco, Project Manager, University of the Azores
The Teaching & Research Hubs developed the initial research frameworks that fed into this process. Read about their work at the General Assembly.
Connecting leadership with implementation
On Wednesday, both Boards joined the Steering Committee for a joint session on the alignment between policy and implementation — specifically around ACT institutional uptake and the Virtual Campus. It's a question that sits at the heart of how European university alliances grow up: how do decisions made at leadership level actually change what happens on the ground?
The upshot
The Boards of Vice-Rectors are where EUNICoast's academic strategy becomes institutional reality. This week in Dubrovnik, they moved the alliance's joint programmes and common research agenda from frameworks into commitments — and connected those commitments to the people responsible for making them happen.
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