The ATHENS Network commits to the Doctorate in Europe

The Project IDEAL (European soft skills for PhD: enhancing transversal skills through innovative doctoral courses) carried out within the ATHENS Network, has been funded by the Erasmus+ Strategic Partnerships programme.

IDEAL consists in designing and providing high-level doctoral training to address the challenges faced by European researchers today: being better prepared to face the growing complexity of their jobs and increasing the economic and societal impact of their work; questioning the relevance of their research activities, while renewing the attractiveness of Doctoral Education for new generations of talents.

The project will firstly create an active database of existing doctoral courses oriented towards soft skills, innovation and employability in order to foster exchanges among partners, and to disseminate best practices. It will secondly consist in designing a new methodology and new contents.

The project will produce a MOOC of the course in a blended learning setting. Part of the courses will also be delivered in a place where Doctoral candidates will actually meet.

The IDEAL project is carried out within the European network ATHENS, whose purpose is to facilitate student, professor and researcher exchanges between major European universities of science & technology, and to take part in European programmes for training and technological development. IDEAL is a pilot project undertaken by some of the ATHENS partners willing to broaden the scope of their collaboration and address together doctoral training challenges.

Project coordinator : Mines ParisTech

The consortium iof ten partners inculdes the following institutions : six French ParisTech Engineering Schools (AgroParisTech, Arts et Métiers ParisTech, Chimie ParisTech, ENSTA ParisTech, Mines ParisTech and TélécomParisTech) and four European Universities of Science and Technology (UPM - Spain, POLIMI Italy, University of Lisbon/IST – Portugal and ITU – Turkey.

Budget : 358 627,00 €

Starting date : October 2019

Duration : 36 months