EUSRExcel - Towards a European University Social Responsibility Excellence Award

The Social Responsibility (SR) is a concept that most of the people relate to the Corporate field. However, according to ISO 26000 standard, SR is to act “in an ethical and transparent way that contributes to the health and welfare of society”. Therefore, the public sector should be, by nature, more interested in the consequences of the actions of an organization (either public or private) on the society. Universities are institutions that have a huge impact on the surrounding society and the territorial development, and furthermore they work in fields such as education and research in which Social Responsibility becomes utterly important. The EU, in the past few years, has been highly active in terms of social policies and priorities aimed at enhancing the positive impact of any kind of institution as well as individuals on the society. With the Europe 2020 strategy, the European Commission aims at a Smart, Sustainable and Inclusive growth which includes SR. Considering the needs of fostering a more effective and efficient university governance model, rewarding innovation and community-relevance and building a more connected higher education system to the surrounding communities, the EUSRExcel project aims at contributing to general objective of developing a common understanding of USR and foster the engagement of the HEIs in Europe by creating on the one side a European framework of USR harmonized indicators to be used as theoretical reference for the University management boards, and on the other side a practical tool to officially evaluate the commitment of the Universities to USR and reward them with a new USR Quality Seal based on the previously mentioned indicators. The project activities will be directly addressed to the members of the management boards, administrative staff, professors and researchers of HEIs in order to promote the institutionalization of the USR in the University governance and foster a more effective HEI model connected to the communities. To reach these goals, EUSRExcel will implement knowledge, tools and trainings that will eventually motivate HEIs internal stakeholders to develop strategic plans that will support engaged HEIs to cope with the emerging societal challenges. A balanced partnership includes 7 organisations from 6 different countries: CONEXX-Europe (BE), Innovate4Future (RO), La Sapienza (IT), University of Girona (ES), VAMK-Vaasa University of Applied Sciences (FI), Dublin City University (IE), Innovation Training Centre (ES) The consortium will be working together in order to reach all the project goals in the most efficient and effective way, and to maximise its impact all over Europe thanks to the geographical distribution of the partners. The project's activities will be the following: IO1: Guide to harmonise USR Indicators, benchmarking standards & indexes and EUSRExcel Wiki IO1.A1: State of the art of the HE Institutional reporting systems IO1.A2: Survey on the specific literature on CSR, Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) and USR Indicators IO1.A3: Harmonisation of the USR indicators related to academic, research and territorial USR IO1.A4: Creation of an online platform which will contain the State of the art, the Survey of the specific literature and best practices IO1.A5: Creation of a Wiki of the USR IO2: USR Online Evaluation Tool and Handbook on the Excellence Awarding Process IO2.A1: Creation of an online self-evaluation tool IO2.A2: Drafting of a self-evaluation tool users Handbook IO2.A3: Creation of a Table for the evaluation of the results IO2.A4: Collection and Analysis of best practices on USR IO2.A5: Development of staff training material IO2.A6: Creation of an External Evaluation Board (EEB) IO2.A7: Design of a USR Quality Seal A LTTA was organized to serve as a validation seminar for testing and evaluating the process and tools developed by the consortium. Through a short piloting, the self-evaluation tool, awarding methodology was put in place and evaluated. Moreover, the harmonised USR indicators guide and the USR Quality seal were presented among the EUSRexcel project institutions. It was a cross-learning opportunity, in which the partners directly involved in the development of the project benefited from external feedback. Others, from the consortium organisations who have not been directly involved in the development of the project were able to have a closer look at the progress and results of the project. Through a role-playing exercise, the participants were divided into two groups and the materials and processes created were evaluated. Each partner of the consortium selected up to 4 participants from their entity. From which at least one of them needed to be a participant who was not directly involved in the development of the EUSRexcel project. This way we ensured the impartiality of the participants and at the same time, we guaranteed an external assessment in order to provide independent and impartial evaluation. Two final Multiplier Event were organised with the aim of gathering relevant Higher Education Institutions, organisations and stakeholders and extending the network of Universities and HEIs interested in making progress in terms of USR and finally fostering their political commitment towards the integration of the USR at institutional and political level.