PASCAL Universities for a Modern Renaissance (PUMR)

PROJECT SUMMARY

Starting points

PASCAL Universities for a Modern Renaissance (PUMR) is an ongoing and developing programme focussed among college and university members of the PASCAL International Observatory.  Members in PASCAL affirm a commitment to using the best principles of social capital, place management, and life-long learning to inspire and sustain strategic partnerships with policy makers, professional practitioners (both public and private), businesses and communities in their regions to secure improvement to regional competitiveness and the quality of life for all residents. 

PASCAL’s PUMR program helps improve the effectiveness of regional partnerships by creating a learning network among college and university peers, and then with local businesses and communities.   Regional engagement is still a new art within higher education.  Many of our institutions still struggle to achieve widespread commitment to the goals, and even when they do commit, to delivering effective engagement.   There is much to learn from the experiences of our peers, and we have a responsibility to the profession to document our learning and disseminate it broadly.

The learning network begins with an endowment of knowledge about successful university engagement that has been pioneered by PASCAL Board Member, Professor James Powell of Salford University (UK) [1].   By using this knowledge as a starting point, PUMR is a global attempt to go beyond simply ‘reaching out’ in a generalised fashion, to society. It is a programme for constructive action fuelled by knowledge, skills and facilities made available through colleges and universities.  PUMR participants pledge to develop new models for regional transformation and modern renaissance, and new ways of working for the co-identification of, and solutions to, problems of priority concern in civic society. 

This is achieved through deep, meaningful and maturing conversations between universities and their community partners.

The current knowledge base emphasises the following key factors:

• University partnerships need to be socially inclusive in order to achieve sustainable success. This includes engaging all communities within our region, and all communities within our own colleges and universities to help transform their lives, thus enabling citizens to flourish [2];
• Regional engagements build value through co-creation.  Value comes from working together with partners to co-identify problems, co-design solutions, and co-produce outcomes that address important priority concerns;
• At these particular times to help the drive for socially inclusive economic prosperity and wealth creation in the richest sense of the phrase wealth [3];
• Engagements co-create many different types of value.  Even though today’s economic climate may place greater emphasis on co-creating economic value, any truly modern regional renaissance co-produces many different types of value [4];
• The concept of “eco-versity” is one helpful way to provide a more “balanced scorecard” for our engagements.  Its “triple bottom line” of environmental, economic, and social sustainability is key to everything we do, but we need better metrics [5];
• Enterprising academics must reach out aggressively to add value because regional partners often find it hard ‘to find a way in’ to build sustainable relationships with higher education institutions [6];
• Co-creating real value with partners in our regions also co-creates high quality research and learning opportunities for faculty and students because real solutions blend interdisciplinary points of view with the full complexity of social, cultural, and economic settings [7].

What does PUMR offer?

PASCAL’s Advisory Board has set up a working party to develop an initial work plan for the PUMR programme.  The goal is to create a “virtuous learning circle” that will allow participants to expand this knowledge base and ‘know-how’ on a continuous basis, disseminate it through meetings, workshops, professional exchanges, peer consulting opportunities, and formal publication outlets, and by:

• Developing a physical and virtual social network to enable ‘virtuous knowledge sharing’ leading to community empowerment to enable citizens and professionals to flourish; a ‘club’ of like-minded academics, external entrepreneurs and community leaders;
• Coaching projects for creative and systemic development and programme leadership & delivery in this areas for continuous improvement;
• Advising Senior Academic Leadership on appropriate strategy to ensure the engagement of academics,  enabling them to become more outwardly enterprising and empowering of communities;
• Validating Universities who want to be considered as ‘PASCAL Universities for a Modern Renaissance’ and help them develop the qualities and levels of their creative engagement;
• Developing Guidance of Enabling Instructions for appropriate Academic Cultural Change.

How to participate?

PASCAL International Observatory is eager to work with any university that seeks to participate in this exciting new initiative.

Participation is possible through becoming a university member of PASCAL at one of two levels which bring different benefits and associated membership fees.  These are:

University network membership

For a fee of €10,000 pa, members have access to relevant knowledge networks, guidance and toolkits available only through the PUMR pages of the PASCAL website and a programme of coaching based on the UPBEAT model; priorities according to member concerns

Full Service programme members

For a fee (the extent of which will depend on specific services negotiated) over two years, members will participate in a global study based on the PURE methodology pioneered by Pascal,  involving expert benchmarking and assessment, a monitored action development programme, and further assessment, leading to possible validation as a PUMR.

More information?

For more information, please contact James Powell.

[1] See www.ac.salford.ac.uk/james-powell/ for additional background information see Appendix I, which illuminates the vision for PUMR by comparing the Old with the Modern Renaissance as PASCAL currently sees it.

[2] So, for Instance the University of Victoria is engaging the ‘Binners’ of its City, and also in Sao Paulo, through powerful, cost-effective and sustainable waste management developments for the benefit of all their citizens.

[3] Five Universities in the North West of the UK have developed a programme of learning with 150 small to medium sized enterprise (SME) aimed at improving their innovation for wealth creation; known by the SMEs as ‘Bouncing Higher’, this programme increased their ‘Gross Value Added’ profits by an average of 24.5% - new skills acquired through nine evening action learning meetings, tailored open learning and virtual coaching. 360,000 such SMEs existing in the NW of the UK could similarly benefit, and millions throughout the world.

[4] Peoples Voice Media, a social enterprise working closely with two Greater Manchester Universities is coaching a thousand ‘Community Reporter’ in a constructive development known as ‘Reuters for the Community’; using sensible, sensitive and cost-effective social media networking this project could enable the sort of ‘Media Conversation’ the BBC is looking to promote in the UK when it moves to Manchester

[5] The University of British Columbia is working with local citizens to empower them to ‘do-it-yourself’ in retrofitting their homes to become carbon zero and highly sustainable.

[6] The UN Global Cities programme, led by RMIT in Melbourne Australia, works across the world to ensure smart city futures enabling citizens and communities to gain confidence to flourish in the global knowledge economy.

[7] The Aalto University’s Camp for Social Innovation is using the skills of University expertise through the world to work with citizens in Helsinki to empower them to help solve six major local problems in their city; key in this is to use ‘Flip-video’ technology linked to powerful social media networks to continuously improve prospective solutions.