Each European Union Center of Excellence invests in its local university community to create, extend, or continue academic, outreach, and research programs relating to the European Union and its member states. Examples of such programs include undergraduate major/minor/certificate programs, annual conferences, masters programs, simulations, new courses, and so forth.
There is no place where better knowledge about Europe, the EU and U.S.-European relations is more critical than in Washington, D.C. ACES is filling this important gap by providing nonpartisan, in-depth analysis to the policy community and the media through lectures, seminars, strategy groups, and other events.
ACES makes a special effort to disseminate knowledge on the EU and U.S. European relations through media and engages journalists in policy debates. ACSE sponsored media programs include:
ACES core educational activities are helping to forge a new generation of leaders knowledgeable about the EU and Europe's evolving role.
The European Studies Certificate program is open to all FIU undergraduates with an interest in any aspect of European civilization, past or present. It is an interdisciplinary program that draws on a broad range of courses from throughout FIU to complement a student's own interests. Approved study-abroad courses, including those offered by the Honors College, may be accepted for certificate credit. The program also offers a senior colloquium, "European Identities", that allows students the opportunity to engage in research on topics of their own choosing in close conjunction with a member of the Program Faculty. The certificate program is open to all students enrolled at FIU and to interested individuals in the community. For further information, visit the program site.
The FIU Genoa program goes beyond a touristic experience and helps students engage with the city and local university. Coursework and independent research, cultural and social activities, and academic travel explore the themes and places pertinent to understanding contemporary Italy and Europe from an inclusive perspective.
Activities and travel include: academic and cultural interaction with students and faculty of the University of Genoa, 3-4 days trip to Brussels to visit the European Union Headquarters, group academic travel to Rome and Florence, day trip to Milan, Turin and nearby Ligurian towns.
Major topics of study: European Union Institutions and politics, Italian and European politics, Globalization and post-Industrial Economies; Migration Issues: Identity, assimilation, policies; Art, Advertising & Propaganda
A partnership between the University of Michigan and the Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences, the Netherlands Visiting Professorship brings to Ann Arbor a distinguished Dutch scholar each year. In the over fifty years of its life, the NVP has hosted geologists, economists, engineers, mathematicians, neurologists, historians, literary and legal scholars, and so forth, from over twelve Dutch universities and institutions. Visitors usually teach a course a semester and they are welcome to participate in the intense academic life at UM beyond their specific discipline. They are also invited to lecture at institutions and colleges in the region where communities of Dutch descent are present in greater number, with support from the Dutch Consulate in Chicago. Themes are selected every three years. For the next three years the themes are: "The New Europe", "Religion" and "Governance".
With a grant from the European Commission, the European Union Center (EUC) and the Horace H. Rackham School of Graduate Studies offers summer grants of $5,000 to work on issues of European integration. Student grantees conduct research and write a paper resulting from this research on a relevant topic of their choosing. It is expected that during spring and/or summer of 2006, the grantees will devote twelve weeks of full time work on this project with a faculty advisor. Recipients may be invited to participate in selected outreach activities organized by the EUC with local high schools, colleges and universities.
At the end of each semester we organize a luncheon on current events related to the EU and Europe. For example, this semester we are hosting British Consul Andrew Seaton who will speak on the UK Presidency of the EU.
UNC's center is home to the Transatlantic Masters Program, a unique fourteen month program of study in transatlantic relations and in the politics, policies and societies of the European Union. TAM students begin their studies at UNC-Chapel Hill and continue at one of the partner sites in Europe, conducting work in the language of the host university. Students receive the MA degree (or the European equivalent) from the university where they submit the thesis. TAM is run by the European American Universities Consortium, a group of six European universities (Sciences Po, Paris; Humboldt University and FU, Berlin; University of Siena, Italy; Carlos III, Madrid; Charles University, Prague; and University of Bath, UK), UNC-CH and the University of Washington, Seattle.
The UNC center supports several faculty and graduate student research working group. One group in particular, Party Positioning on European Integration (Profs Hooghe, Marks, Steenbergen, Vachudova), investigates how political parties across the European Union take positions on the thorny issues raised by European integration. The group is run in collaboration with researchers at the Free University, Amsterdam, and involves faculty and graduate student participants from the US and Europe. The group's earlier series of workshops resulted in a published volume, European Integration and Political Conflict, (Cambridge UP, 2004) as well as two original data sets, which are the most commonly used source of data on political parties and European integration, cited in over one one-hundred scholarly articles. The project will extend the data collection to the enlarged EU for 2006.
The UNC center runs the North Carolina Video Collaborative in European Union Studies. This collaborative links three schools — North Carloina State University, UNC-Charlotte, and UNC-Chapel Hill — via video to share upper division EU Studies courses. The program provides a cost-effective way of sharing faculty expertise in EU topics unique at each campus. Around 70 students each semester enroll in these classes. Students completing two or more courses in a sequence receive a certificate in EU Studies awarded by the EU Center of Excellence at UNC.
The European Union Center of Excellence's annual Model European Union (MEU) simulation was initiated in 2001 to provide university students at Pitt, our region and in other states an opportunity to enhance their understanding of classroom learning and give them a tangible sense of the challenges involved in the EU's institutions, decision-making processes and high-level negotiations. The MEU simulates a European Council summit in which undergraduate students play the role of heads of state of EU member- and accession-states to debate and resolve issues facing the EU including deeper integration and the accession of additional countries in the future. The event is more than a historical simulation that replicates the outcome of the actual event; rather, students are encouraged to devise a possible alternative solution based on the same initial conditions and constraints. Hundreds of students have participated to date from a variety of institutions including Pitt's Oakland and Johnstown campuses, Centenary College (New Jersey), East Stroudsburg University, Slippery Rock University, University of Oklahoma, University of Syracuse, University of Washington, and Washington and Jefferson College.
The European Union Center of Excellence's annual policy conference began in 1999 with a thematic focus on "The New Transatlantic Challenge: Strengthening Institutional Cooperation in Immigration and Criminal Justice." Subsequent conferences focused on "The Future of EU-US Aviation Relations," "Private Law, Private International Law, and Judicial Cooperation in the EU-US Relationship," and other topics with the overriding goals of furthering the transatlantic dialogue on important and emerging issues of concern to the EU, its member-states and the US; and creating and nurturing international scholarly networks to further research in policy-relevant fields. The conference theme in 2006 is "The Bologna Process: Transatlantic Perspectives," and like all previous conferences benefits from an intellectual organizer (usually a faculty member from a professional school) and the participation of policy-makers and academics in the public and private sectors from both sides of the Atlantic. Select conferences have resulted in book-length publications and special issues of academic journals.
European Union Center of Excellence's annual faculty research conference has highlighted a number of distinct topics over the years. Conference topics have included "Concatenations" with its reexamination of national identity and national borders in Europe; "Where is Europe?" and its exploration of the changing and ambiguous meanings of Europe from a historical perspective; and "Managing Extreme Events: Transatlantic Perspectives" that brought together experts from across the Atlantic to consider policy and practice in the EU-US relationship as a means for addressing the probable threat of extreme events in collaborative ways. Future faculty research conference foci will include the EU's foreign policy and its agricultural and environmental sustainability policies.
The West Coast Model EU was created to afford undergraduate students from across the region a hands-on exposure to the European Union. Students from the UW and other universities on the West Coast are assigned to play the role of representatives of the EU member states as they negotiate issues affecting the future direction of EU policies and European integration. The center subsidizes travel costs for the student teams coming to the UW from other universities and works with its partners at BYU and the Claremont Colleges to develop the simulation scenario and recruit student teams. Universities that have participated in past years include the University of Oregon, Portland State University, University of British Columbia, and Seattle University. The Model EU is preceded each year by an EU simulation course held in the fall quarter, with the Model EU being executed during the UW's winter quarter. The center also sends at least one UW team to participate in the annual model EU hosted by the EU Center of Excellence in Pittsburgh.
The EU Center has developed a broad range of programs designed to allow UW students to study the EU at partner European universities. Dozens of UW graduate and undergraduate students have participated in our Comparative Federalism (COMFED) and Certificate in Trans-Atlantic Studies (CTAS) programs. The latter is offered in cooperation with our Euromasters partners at the University of Bath and is designed for graduate and advanced undergraduate students at the University of Washington interested in U.S.-European relations, comparative public policy, and political culture. A new EU-focused graduate program at Linköpings University in Sweden will complement our longstanding partnerships with European universities in the COMFED and Euromasters consortia. Center funding helps defray the costs of these programs for UW students and is likewise being used to support a new EU summer study program in Brussels. The Brussels program is open to undergraduate students from across the US and is being run in partnership with the Institute for European Studies at the Université Libre de Bruxelles and our partner center at the University of Wisconsin.
Economic integration in the expanding European Union has not been at the expense of public health, environmental sustainability or consumer protection, a triumph which has gained the EU international recognition. Through the core theme "Europe's Expanding Social Dimensions," faculty affiliated with the University of Wisconsin-Madison EUCE are exploring the impact of EU expansion on these social dynamics within the Member States. By studying policy changes and their practical impact on EU member states, we hope to draw out potential lessons for policy and practice in the US and elsewhere. "Europe's Expanding Social Dimensions" is led by Jonathan Zeitlin (Sociology, Public Affairs, Political Science, and History), Myra Marx Ferree (Sociology, Women's Studies), and Louise Trubek (Law): three of its projects specifically address environmental issues.