ExcelLR: a programme of excellence for a new university model

La Rochelle Université is the winner of the “Excellence in all its forms” call for projects – part of the fourth Investments for the Future Programme (PIA4) – launched in 2020 by the French government to finance innovative investments in ecological transition. This call for projects supports academic and research institutions developing ambitious transformation projects based on their territorial dynamics and specific needs. 

The university has been awarded €16 million by the French National Agency for Research (ANR) to contribute to the implementation of the ExcelLR project over a 10-year period. 

Project overview

Since 2018, La Rochelle Université has been bringing together its laboratories, master’s programmes and PhDs within the Smart Urban Coastal Sustainability Institute (LUDI) to create a new university model centred on LUDI specialisation.

The ExcelLR project, developed in partnership with CNRS (French National Centre for Scientific Research), IFREMER (French Research Institute for Exploitation of the Sea) and IRD (French National Research Institute for Sustainable Development), aims to strengthen this transformation process through four key areas of work.

Line 1: STRENGTHEN SPECIALISATION IN RESEARCH

In order to attract new talent, La Rochelle Université plans to create a European centre of excellence on smart sustainable urban coastlines with a budget of several million euros, which would operate through major programmes with professorships of excellence. The aim will be to attract excellent researchers and their teams to work on subjects defined in a revised governance, shared with the local and international socio-economic actors of EU-CONEXUS, through a strategic orientation committee.

Find out more about the specialisation of La Rochelle Université’s research.

This work benefited from a State grant managed by the “Agence Nationale de la Recherche” under the “Investissements d’avenir” programme with the reference ANR-21-EXES-0010

LINE 2: BOOST ATTRACTIVENESS BY DEVELOPING SPECIALISED COURSES

Thanks to previous PIA funding, the University has thoroughly transformed its undergraduate programme. But it still needs to reform its master’s and doctoral programmes. It will therefore concentrate its efforts on 2 key actions:

• on the one hand, the creation of a European doctoral school on smart urban coastal sustainability, integrated into the LUDI Institute, which will structure all the master’s and doctoral programmes on this subject
• on the other hand, the development of lifelong learning on these societal issues. The objective here is to propose an expertise produced by science for the future definition of public policies.

Find out more about the transformation of training paths at La Rochelle Université.

LINE 3: INCREASE THE SOCIETAL IMPACT AND ANCHOR THE UNIVERSITY IN ITS TERRITORY

The aim is to create a “Science & Society Comm’On Lab” in La Rochelle to support the development and monitoring of the institution’s projects, whether they be research programmes, educational explorations or student initiatives, in order to anchor them in a societal strategy.

It is a centre for the dissemination of scientific culture, designed in partnership with the Communauté d’Agglomération de la Rochelle, which will propose actions that will combine the arts and sciences, educational demonstrators, and scientific experiments that are visible in the Nouvelle-Aquitaine region. These territories of scientific experimentation can be duplicated in the different territories of EU-CONEXUS.

Find out more about the implementation of the smart, sustainable and responsible campus.

LINE 4: DESIGNING NEW STEERING TOOLS AND INDICATORS TO MONITOR THE UNIVERSITY’S STRATEGY

The new university model requires a major shift from fixed national guidelines to a specific success framework that reflects the institution’s ambition and is supported by appropriate steering tools. The current evaluation protocols of the HCERES are indeed very much linked to the university environment and rather transversal. This is why, with ExcelLR, the University will develop new steering tools and indicators, in conjunction with the CNRS, IFREMER and IRD.