What is the motivation behind the EUCOR Master Plant Science?

What we want

Our planet depends on plant life. The central challenges of the future are food security, sustainable use of natural resources, and control over the consequences of climate change. All three challenges are intimately linked with Plant Science. To cope with these challenges, we need to join science, application and society. Plant Science has been very international from its very beginnings. The Plant Science of the future has to become even more international.

The Upper Rhine Region is not only geographically in the center of Europe, it is one of the region, where the idea of an European identity has shaped society down to the everyday life of people. In a time, where Europe as a project is under pressure due to populistic movements or even the exit of entire countries, the five universities of Strasbourg, Colmar, Freiburg, Karlsruhe, and Basel have set up the EUCOR European Campus, a project that is unique worldwide, because in contrast to other universities, EUCOR is crossing the borders.

This EUCOR European Campus has now to be filled with real life. Plant scientists from all five EUCOR universities have therefore united to set up a joint Master programme.

What we do

To get rapidly from vision to reality, we will first start to open current modules in Plant Science for students from the other EUCOR universities. Since all partners have successfully established the European Credit Point Transfer System and reshaped their study curricula into consecutive Bachelor and Master courses, all preconditions are set to start straightaway. EUCOR Plant Science students will get their degree from their home university, but in addition will obtain a EUCOR certificate as positive asset while applying for jobs or Ph.D. positions.  As longterm objective a joint Eucor Master programme Plant Science will be established, such that students will obtain a real European degree.

What the benefits are

The students joing the EUCOR Master can complement the competences acquired in their home university by high-level scientific and technical skills from other EUCOR sites which will improve their position on the international job market. For the partner universities, it is possible to make us of courses available in the other sites, such that considerable synergies are released. A third important issue: people that cooperate in teaching, will also cooperate in research, which will further contribute to the integration of the Upper Rhine Region as major science center in Europe. Thus, the academic integration stimulated by EUCOR, will also promote the already established networks in Plant Science, such as the Interreg Upper Rhine network Vitifutur.