ULNE

The year 2020 was the last full year of our probationary period. It was to be a year of consolidation of our academic strategy dedicated to the theme of global transition. It was also to be a year of finalization of institutional construction with the development of the statutes of the future University of Lille.

However, two events significantly changed the course of the past year. On the one hand, thanks to the extension of our 4 Labex, the ANR allocated us an additional year of I-SITE funding. This significant envelope represented a unique opportunity to make new strategic investments where we had detected weaknesses that were not taken into account. On the other hand, the outbreak of the Covid-19 pandemic in March 2020 abruptly interrupted our institutional and, to a lesser extent, academic dynamics which impacted the overall project.

Thus, this new ANR endowment allowed us to pay the first budgets planned as part of the extension of the Labex (€6,454,000) but also to target structuring actions allowing us to enrich our collective assessment. In addition to the Labex funding, the 2021 budget was distributed after a vote by the Board of Directors on 14 Sept. 2020 as follows:

Means to strengthen our site: €2,100,000

• • Emergency search Covid-19: €2,000,000. This endowment was voted unanimously on the occasion of the Extraordinary Board of Directors organized on March 31, 2020. It was piloted collegially as part of Covid Task Force. The unused balance (€320,000) due to the abandonment of an interventional study project was reallocated to the Health-PhD program to encourage young health students to realize their research. At this stage, 28 research projects have been funded. The Region Council decided to provide additional support to two of these projects (€400,000).
  • ‘TDM’, a data search tool for research management: €100,000 for the first recruitments or pre-commissioned work of this project in the next years.

Specific means in support of the identity of our site: €3,881,000

• • Support for the SFRI "GRAEL" project for the takeoff of the Graduate Programs: €1,148,212. This amount comes in addition to the budget already planned for the creation of the Graduated Schools for a total of €2,278,000 (university reopening 2020 and 2021). This budget could be supplemented by an endowment of around €2,800,000 if the I-SITE label is confirmed in 2022. These funds were announced as part of the GRAEL project.
  • Support for the IDEES "WILL" project: €1,486,080, first funding to enable the rehabilitation of former premises for the future Maison internationale. A second funding could be also added in the event of the confirmation of the Label of Excellence. These funds were announced as part of the WILL project filing.
  • Proposals for international action: €341,980 (international mobility and support for the 3I cross-border network).
  • Support for the construction of the Cultures, Societies and Practices in Change HUB: €540,467 (call for expressions of interest discussed on hub clusters and chairs of excellence).
  • Chair in Educational Technologies with KU Leuven: learning spaces (Ms. RAES): €260,000.
  • Accompanying the setup of a EQUIPEX project: €55,000
  • Funding for a "partner evening" dedicated to the valuation and partnerships of research companies: €30,000.
  • Ethical Design Research Project: €20,000.

Means to bring communities together on our site: €1,620,000.

• • Supporting governance the conduct of change and communication: €200,000.
  • Key engineering action (phase 1: engineering schools and University of Lille/Polytech): €400,000 to support structuring actions in the field of engineering.
  • How to adapt education in response to the health constraints associated with Covid-19: €710,640.
  • Cross-cutting research: Productive Metropolis Chair and Territorial Resilience (Lille Urban School: University of Lille, ENSAPL, Sc Po Lille): €109,000.
  • Cross-cutting research:
    • spaces and limits of medical innovation (University of Lille and Pasteur Institute of Lille): €100,000;
  • evolution of the organization of care as a result of the Covid-19 pandemic (CHU, Centrale Lille, Sciences Po Lille, University of Lille): €100,000.

As stated above, we had therefore allocated funding to the GRAEL and WILL projects to get them started without waiting for the verdict of the jury of the Future Investment Programme (PIA). We can even more rejoice in the success of these projects, which will benefit from the PIA's €16M, and congratulate those who carried out these projects.

We can also look forward to the results of the Covid-19 emergency research. All of the results obtained are presented in the “transition(s)” booklets published (Chapter 1 & 2) or to be published (Ch. 3 & 4) and will be taken up concisely in the final assessment of I-SITE.

As we mentioned in the preamble, these academic works and successes were carried out in parallel with the institutional construction of the project. 2019 were a year of substantive work led by the I-SITE foundation Executive Director. We redesigned and structured our academic positioning, and the target university is now displaying itself as "a university for global transition". In January 2020, the leaders of the institutions involved and the I-SITE Executive Director organized themselves in project mode with the aim of gradually involving the communities in this institutional construction.

The work performed early 2020 led to the publication of a proposal entitled "principles and commitments". We scheduled the submission in March 2021 of this proposal to the boards of directors of the institutions involved. The university and the journalism school had time to present this text and collect motions from their respective boards of directors. On the other hand, the outbreak of the pandemic in all of our activities abruptly interrupted this process of community ownership of the project. The boards of directors could no longer meet from 13 March and the institutional question became inaudible in the new context of health emergency.

Following the request of the Heads of the institutions, the work was put on hold. I-SITE coordinated Covid-19 research and each institution refocused on health emergencies and their organizational consequences. Discussions continued within the Project steering Committee, but work did not really resume until Sept. 2020 with working groups (status, HR, finance, communication, management and documentation) made up of General Directors and experts in these fields from different institutions.

These groups, with the Project Committee’s approval, made proposals for statutes and organizational model. This led to a draft statute on 29 Oct. 2020, addressed for advice to the Ministry and the various communities. These exchanges resulted in an amended version of this draft statute on 11 Dec. 2020. These statutes were accompanied by a political document to explain the general strategy and the main principles of operational functioning of the University of Lille 2022. A website was set up.

The institutional project had to be modified after the decision of the Board of Directors of Central Lille Institute on 17 Dec. 2020. The school decided to continue its contribution to the experimental public institution as an associate institution and no longer as a member. On the other hand, early 2021, the textile school, ENSAIT, joined the project in the wake of the review of its institutional perimeter. On February 12, 2021, the new draft statutes was shared with the community. This project, which takes into account the reservations and observations of communities and bodies, was sent on 22 April to the Boards of Directors of the founding institutions of the University of Lille 2022. All voted quite favorably. However, the vote of the board of directors of the school of architecture raises a legal question related to its own statutes. To avoid any legal risk, the school will vote again on May 11.

The future "University of Lille" will include the current University of Lille, the National Higher School of Textile Arts and Industries, Sciences Po Lille, the National Higher School of Architecture and Landscape in Lille and the Lille Higher School of Journalism. This is the conclusion of a long process that began in Feb. 2019, which aimed to bring together a collective site strategy with a common institutional organization.