James Powell, Academic Director of PASCAL PUMR recently led a Executive Higher Educational Institution Briefing for 12 Rectors and Vice Rectors on the Modern Renaissance, its implications for them and the role PUMR can play in helping prepare their universities for the Modern Era. The event was hosted by the Central European University in Budapest with a grant from the European ESMU fund. There was much interest by the Rectors in the PUMR approach and requests for Professor Powell to undertake follow up meetings for detailed discussions in Kazakstan, Belarus and Poland. All universities in Europe are experiencing the same economic constraints as the rest of the world and are looking for new ways to enable themselves to flourish. There was much discussion in Eastern European Universities of differentiating between need and demand with respect to HE and how difficult it was for post-communist countries to get a real understanding of what they could now do in much a more open environment

Professor Powell is now in New York presenting a paper on PUMR to the Annual Association of Geographers' (AAG) Conference. This conference, the largest in the world, had a special session on Universities and the City. Professor Powell received an Enrichment Award from the AAG to attend this event and to talk about PUMR and university change in the context of city region development. Many US universities attended and it was interesting to note that the PUMR approach was considered as important to them even though they invented the Land Grant Universities. Most American universities now have a strong emphasis towards commercialism and entrepreneurship, but our PASCAL approach was considered richer in the way it focused on co-creation, co-production and more general ways of helping regional communities. While still allowing academics to be enterprising, its focus on higher social values was much welcomed.