The aim the European Ceramic Materials (EUCERMAT) project is to significantly contribute to changing the general opinion about ceramics materials in Europe. As a matter of fact, ceramic materials are too often simply associated to great diffusion materials mainly employed as building materials (covering plates factories, glasses for windows... etc.). This narrow and negative image is the main reason for the difficulties faced by education institution in the recruitment of students in the field of Ceramic Materials trainings. To overcome this situation, EUCERMAT aims at implementing a new methodology based on a relevant functioning of the knowledge triangle in the domain of ceramic material. To make this possible, highly relevant academic (universities and research centres) and industrial (from start-up to multinational groups) partners, already closely working together at national level, joined forces in the consortium submitting this project proposal. Their aim is to reinforce their cooperation and create a common space where the interaction between research, education and innovation is optimised. The European Ceramic Materials (EUCERMAT) project is a three years educational programme during which modern ways of teaching more adapted to the international cooperation between academic institutions will be developed. 1) A teaching programme, integrating blended mobility and virtual classes via the moodle platform, will be developed to offer international courses that will be coupled to very unique teaching practical labs, closely connected to research and performed on instrumental platforms of laboratories associated to the different universities or research institutes. 2) A charter will be implemented, defining a new way to promote the relationships between universities and industries through teaching projects. 3) Tutored projects for students will be implemented with the industrial partners. The subjects will be of industrial interest but defined in cooperation with the academics of the universities and researchers. The subjects will be prospective and challenging, corresponding to up-stream research so that a strong connexion with the research laboratories is developed. 4) Innovative practices to promote ceramic sciences to the community: civil society and principally high school students will be developed and implemented during the programme. To change the general opinion about ceramics materials in Europe, communication and dissemination events will be organized by the European Ceramics Society (ECerS), the main federation of national ceramic societies in Europe, which is the sixth partner of the project. Thanks to cooperation between the partners in the present strategic partnership programme, a road map aiming at defining guidelines to orientate the future research subjects, teaching projects and economic issues to challenge for the future years will be thoroughly discussed and ultimately defined. At the end of the programme, a new European master programme dedicated to ceramic materials and relevant to the needs of the industry will be proposed. It will also contribute to promote stronger coherence between the different EU partners. To ensure the sustainability of work of the knowledge triangle and the evolution of the Strategic Partnership programme towards an even more ambitious and structured project, a Knowledge Alliance application appears as a logical pursuit.
The EUCERMAT strategic partnership is an educational programme promoting the science of ceramics in Europe by sharing, developing and transferring innovative practices among universities and enhancing novelty in the field of trainings and research. The principal aim of this programme is then to achieve greater impact and visibility of innovative ceramic materials in Europe in order to stimulate this economic sector and in parallel to increase the natural enrolment of students in this disciplinary field. EUCERMAT promotes a strong synergy between industries and the leading universities working in this field in Europe. This partnership has set up, at master level, modern teaching methods integrating industrial prerogatives which are based on specialties of excellence of the participating universities. The partnership also manages innovative research projects between companies and universities in which the selected students are involved. The aim is therefore both to promote the image of ceramics among young people (high school pupils) and general public and to train highly qualified researchers likely to make a useful and powerful contribution in industrial innovations. The EUCERMAT program, coordinated by the University of Limoges, gathered together 13 European partners: 5 universities, 2 research institutes, 4 companies, 1 European learned society, 1 High school. The activities carried out during the three years of the project allowed: • To promote the science of ceramic materials thanks to the development of new pedagogical tools for high schools and specific promoting tools towards the general public. The goal is here clearly to attract more students in this field in the higher educational system. During this program, we benefited from the support of a renowned American institution (American Ceramic Society) which has been working on this topic for a few years. This work, which gathered together teachers from the high schools, academics from universities and industrials aims at building a bridge between secondary and higher educational system, clarifying in that way the training offers in the field of ceramic materials. A network of 15 European high schools has been set up and an educational program in materials science was designed for pupils involved in the last two years of the scientific classrooms. A pedagogical tool consisting in a ‘kit of knowledge’ encompassing few scientific experiences aiming to show the main properties of materials have been distributed in the high school network to initiate pedagogical collaboration. • To set up of a common training offer in English at the Master's level. The choice of courses was established in agreement with the industrial partners. Each university of the project provides an e-learning training module representative of the best skills of universities completed by a week session of practical work taking the research aspects to students. • To strengthen the functioning of the knowledge triangle in the field of ceramics sciences, through the creation of a European industrial network (14 Companies) offering funded research internships to second-year master's students. The research themes of the internships were established in agreement with the academic research laboratories (universities or institutes). The strategy developed is very innovative since these actions involve academic and industrial partners sharing long-standing cooperation (forming ‘active cells’) which guarantees the excellence of the research activities for students selected to participate to the program. The networking of the partners makes it possible to encourage European collaborations together with pooling of resources and skills. Each year, about 15 students belonging to the 5 universities participate to this programme (master level e-learning teaching programme and industrial internships) and 200 pupils and 50 teachers are concerned by the pedagogical activities towards high-schools. Research activities are impacting the 5 laboratories associated to the universities and the 2 research institutes that are partners of the programme. The EUCERMAT program has developed tools and resources which can now be used to ensure its sustainability. • At the level of innovative practices in communication around ceramics, the network of high schools and the synergy of functioning with universities are now settled and will be maintained thanks to the collaborations and to the educational tools developed within the framework of the program. • Regarding the teaching and research activities for master's students (the educational master’s programme), the courses are now created and are available by e-learning teaching hosted on Moodle platform and the business network will have its own interest in proposing new research topic each year and funded research internship for students. As a consequence the EUCERMAT activities are maintained today.