European Network: To sustain the Women’s careers as Academics, Researchers and Professionals in Engineering, Computers and Science / ESTIA-EARTH

ESTIA-EARTH was in the periode 2008-2111 the work done until today within the ESTIA-Net (2003-2006). ESTIA-EARTH was dealing with a contemporary problem at structural level of postgraduate education and policy decisions:

• Interdisciplinary and multidisciplinary curricula require the development of suitable structures
• Multicultural and multinational groups of people, particularly women need specialized M. Sc programs
• Women-friendly character of the proposed curriculum, based on intensive learning, joint partnerships of universities collaborating to this curriculum, an open and distance character of courses, a flexibility in the selection of courses and/or enrolment in different universities
• The curricula open both for young students (male and/or female) and at the same time to professionals which need to reshape their basic education with skills involving new ICT, e-business, life-science, health engineering, environmental and renewable energy sources etc
• Supporting character to educate women immigrants at postgraduate level by grants and fellowships.

• To increase the awareness of educational systems about gender bias issues faced by multicultural- multinational groups of women, when it comes to make their career choices
• To inform and motivate young women to follow scientific professions and to lead women to their educational and career paths
• To further identify and select interdisciplinary and multidisciplinary postgraduate degree courses in partner universities, involving E/C/S, renewable energy, environment, economics and management disciplines as well as life, health
• To study the implementation of a new interdisciplinary/multidisciplinary-based curriculum at MSc program level, friendly to women and open to lifelong education and learning.

Some project activities were the following:

• To develop a new interdisciplinary/multidisciplinary postgraduate curriculum, research will be carried out for existing interdisciplinary courses and modules
• Research will have to be carried out by the partners. Universities will be requested to provide the courses and teaching materials
• Development of key competencies which could help women to orientate for their careers
• Expert meetings will be scheduled to address the specific issues of MSc Program
• Two international conferences
• Valorisation and dissemination of project results by all project partners at national and European level.

The project partners are higher education institutions and research centre from Europe.
It was agreed that the project partners continue on the development of the courses, which were designed in the project.