To meet the expectations of Lisbon strategy and the objectives of the last R&D programme of the European Commission, the injection of more finances (i.e. 3 % of EU GDP) into research
is necessary but not sufficient without a well structured training programme that delivers modern scientific concepts and educates the scientists to perform wealth-generating research and to integrate science into the society.
EASCO has devised recently a new educational programme aiming to increase the productivity of the ERA by imparting complementary skills to EU researchers on research management, intellectual property management, entrepreneurship, communication and ethics. This programme, called
European School of Management (ESM) aims to generate a new scientific culture which will facilitate the exploitation of scientific innovation by imparting new management skill to researchers and implementing the adademia-industry partnerships.
A new training scheme has been devised by:
(a) setting up a teaching team composed by scientists having skills on management, communication and teaching (instead of consultants, who miss the language of researchers)
(b) adapting the training modules to early and late stage of the research career. A 3rd module will impart communication and teaching techniques, enabling the trainees to become trainers themselves (see the
list of modules). The workshop modules will be combined with individual coaching and practical training on building up projects and career plans, developed by the
EASCO staff. Therefore, researchers will acquire skills to become good project managers and also good trainers on management and communications allowing thus disseminating such training wherever it is required. Furthermore, a new software, the
RAMS (Rapid Acquirement of Magaments Skills), which allows learning and self-evaluating the management skills, will be developed to set up and combined with an internet platform of individual personalised remote learning . The quality of the training will be optimised by the feedback of trainees in each workshop, and the quality of the whole training will be monitored by specialists on science management and communication. The educational modules and tools will be then optimized and standardized to become a new training product exploitable wherever needed. This allows spreading a management culture through the ERA, bursting thus in the next years a modern wealth-generating research, that will be in harmony with ethical, social and cultural European traditions.
A first pilot course has been delivered to the students of the University of Bologna on May 12th-15th, 2008:
