Provide for a strong and sustainable pool of experts for European Standardisation: attract the students of university/HEI -

Expected Outcome

Projects should support the following outcomes:

• Inclusion of standardisation knowledge in curricula of university/Higher Education Institutions (HEI) to educate students about standardisation in order to attract them, a tomorrow’s professionals, to contribute to standardization: building up a strong and sustainable pool of European standardisation-competent professionals ready to engage in European and International Standardisation;
• Increased visibility of standardisation in European universities/HEI;
• More standardisation-competent university/HEI education leavers forming the pool of professionals ready to contribute to and defending EU’s interest in standardisation;
• More set of courses for universities/HEI integrating standardisation contents and covering the respective technological, innovations-supportive and societal aspects including the potential of standards to safeguard EU core values;
• Increased visibility of standardisation at universities/HEI through “Academic Standardisation Days” and setting-up of a Students’ Standardisation Association.

Scope

“European Green Deal” and “New Industrial Strategy for Europe”, as well as the geopolitical environment, call for a strong EU presence in international standardisation development.

This action aims at providing for a robust and sustainable pool of European professionals ready to contribute to standardisation and support positioning EU as global standard-setter. University/HEI teaching is key to build up the pool of standardisation experts. Academics teaching can provide for standardisation-competent graduates, who are aware of the benefits of standardisation and thus ready, as young professionals, to make Europe’s voice heard in international standardisation.

Those teachers of EU universities/HEI, who already integrate standardisation-related content in their lectures, should team up and, in co-operation with industry, design an innovative teaching concept of standardisation. This concept should cover the standardisation under IEC, ISO and ITU lead; update students on the highly decentralised, global ICT-related standardisation (fora and consortia); and address the technical and societal facets of standardisation (multidisciplinary orientation). The teaching concept has the mission to bridge between these two standardisation domains as well as integrate the aspects of a human-centric standardisation and the EU core values. This concept should foster the development of green and digital skills and underline the respective support through standardisation.

Based on this concept, content modules should be developed for direct and distant teaching. Both, the teaching concept and the modules should be shared with universities/HEI which are ready to include, for the first time, standardisation-content in their teaching offer.

Promotion actions should be designed in order to increase the visibility of standardisation in EU academia/HEI; here “Academic Standardisation Days” and “Students’ Standardisation Association(s)” should be considered as practical realisations.

Proposals should involve appropriate expertise in Social Sciences and Humanities (SSH), in particular in sociology, political science, economy and philosophy, to achieve an academic teaching that covers the different types of impact of standardization including the human-centred approach and compliance with the European core values.

In order to achieve the expected outcomes, international cooperation is encouraged.

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