Across Europe, more universities are being encouraged to provide lifelong learning to non-traditional students, including executives and other external stakeholders. This creates a challenge.

As some universities already struggle to find sufficient faculty to teach increasing numbers of traditional university students, it is often even more problematic to find faculty with the appropriate expertise, knowledge, and skills to teach non-traditional students. This new group of students adds an additional challenge to the mix. TIAS School for Business and Society has turned this challenge into an opportunity.

In 2021, under the flag of ENGAGE.EU – Engage University, a consortium of nine leading European universities in business, economics, and the social sciences, TIAS developed the Faculty Bridge programme. This international programme aims to increase the number of faculty capable of teaching (non) executive (higher) education. In this programme, experienced Executive Educators share their knowledge, skills, and experience with (junior) university-based faculty to help them prepare and become comfortable in designing and delivering (non)executive teaching.

Background

The global higher education community has generally done a fairly good job of keeping up with the pace of change. However, the numerous external factors now at play are so plentiful that this is becoming increasingly difficult. Factors such as geopolitical conflicts and wars, economic instability, high inflation and increasing energy prices, accelerated digitalisation and concerns around the ethical use of technologies such as artificial intelligence, changing demographics, migration and refugees, political polarization, climate change and the sustainability challenge are all among the major challenges of our time and drivers of change for universities.

In this context, governments are urging higher education institutions to play their part in the continuous development of our workforce, fostering lifelong learning. In a number of countries in Europe, this has now become a requirement. Are universities ready to take on the challenge? Do they have the infrastructure, flexibility, appropriate educational staff, and enough of them, to facilitate the continuous development of this lifelong learning transition?

The nine universities involved in the Engage.eu network answered that question with NO. They further commented that stepping into the unfamiliar world of lifelong learning and (non)executive adult teaching is not easy for their faculty, especially when that also means combining a research career with an increased teaching load. There is a clear and obvious need, therefore, for a programme that prepares traditional university faculty to play an active role in fostering lifelong learning.

Programme Structure and Design

The Faculty Bridge programme is specifically designed to help (junior) faculty of traditional research and applied universities to operate in this new environment while still nurturing their research ambitions. The programme is coordinated and managed by TIAS (Tilburg, The Netherlands) but delivered in close collaboration with NHH Norwegian School of Economics and Hanken School of Economics.

It is an intensive, dynamic, and interactive programme, with a supportive mentoring system at its core. It also provides valuable networking opportunities with like-minded colleagues in an international setting. Throughout the sessions, internationally renowned Executive Education faculty share their insights, tips, tricks, do’s and don’ts, and offer suggestions and feedback as participants refine their newly acquired skills.

The programme provides many opportunities to practice, reflect, and receive and incorporate suggestions and feedback on audience-specific presentation styles, course development techniques, and useful tools to help structure and refine content and improve overall performance. With its focus on interaction, coaching, peer-to-peer, and experiential learning, the programme is a great example of lifelong learning in Executive Education.

The programme is designed as a hands-on hybrid programme consisting of 10 days and is delivered in two onsite modules (in Tilburg, NL) and one online module. It is offered once a year and is open to (junior) faculty of research and applied science universities, worldwide. Since its start, 25 faculty have participated. The forthcoming third edition of the programme starts on 12 December 2024, and we expect to welcome another 13-15 (junior) faculty members.

More Information

More specific information about the programme can be found HERE. If you have any questions or would like to find out more about the programme and how it can be of benefit to you and your colleagues, then please do not hesitate to get in touch with either Hariette Voortman or Lucienne Mochel.

For additional insights, trends and perspectives about higher education, visit the conversation here.