About the 53rd eucen conference
The aim of University Continuing Education is to have impact in at least three domains: To have impact on the motivation and performance of professionals; to have impact on solving societal challenges such as the Sustainable Development Goals; and to have an impact on social cohesion, social engagement and active citizenship. For achieving impact in these domains, we need to work together, to collaborate and to generate sustainable partnerships: between the university and public and private societal partners, between universities and other knowledge and training institutions, and between education and research. Thus, research universities as well as universities of applied sciences need to to improve and develop a professional repertoire for establishing and maintaining these forms of collaboration.
During EUCEN 2023 we would like to focus on collaboration and connection. How do we jointly identify and articulate the need for expertise and intelligible learning and development questions? How can we address that need with University Continuing Education? What does that mean for our current portfolio? How can we cooperatively develop new knowledge and insights? What connections should we develop or strengthen? And how can we organise cooperation and create participation and learning networks?
Streams and topics
Based on the recent developments in the Netherlands and at Utrecht University in particular, we will discuss the changing positioning of University Continuing Education in society and explore future horizons where UCE might be less about courses and degrees and more about becoming a knowledge partner in a learning network with several actors. Through keynote contributions, table discussions, expert sessions and challenge-based assignments with external partners we tend to create a worthwhile experience for providers of UCE from around the world! The general theme of the conference is operationalised in three different streams for which we suggest - without being complete- some questions to pose:
