EIT Climate KIC Labelled Programmes

Dear Master School Community,

 As you will have already realised, the Journey format this summer must be adapted to the Covid-19 travel and social distancing restrictions. The Journey Team will soon send out all the details of the new programme, including the Journey to which students have been assigned. But before then, we wanted to give the whole Master School Community an update as to how the Journey is changing in response to Covid-19 as well as the next steps for students already enrolled this year.

The main headline is that the Journey 2020 programme is going to move into a hybrid format composed of an online core part with some optional localised elements included in the programme. These can be activated depending on how the Covid-19 situation evolves over the summer.

The second major change that will be communicated is that instead of the Journey being run once in late June and July and then again in August, the programme has been combined into a single edition for all participants. The online Journey programme will now start on Monday July 13 and will finish on Friday August 7.

Finally, if the Covid-19 situation allows it, the Journey Summit is now scheduled to take place over a long weekend in September (tentative date 23-28 September; to be confirmed by the end of May). It is important for students to know in advance that Journey Summit that is proposed to run in late September will be an optional part of the summer school. The final Journey grade will be based on the work handed in during the core four-week online programme.

We understand that these dates are different to those you have already signed-up for. Therefore, where the new dates are no longer feasible, it will be possible for Master School students to defer until next year. In the email from the Journey team please use the online form to accept or reject the offer of a place for the new Journey dates. You will have just over two weeks to decide. If you do not complete the form, it will be assumed that you will not participate this summer and your place will be offered to another student.

If you choose to reject a Journey place this year, it is your personal responsibility to sign-up again next year. You will be informed of the 2021 sign-up process early next year.

Given this new information, with all due respect to individual schedules and circumstances this summer, the Master School team would still encourage all currently enrolled students to join this year’s programme. There are three important reasons why:

First, because it will be great! It will be the world’s first online extreme low emission climate innovation summer school. As active Journey participants, you will also be learning a huge amount how to collaborate, communicate and connect professionally online, not to mention important skills for the post-Covid-19 world, as well as the climate crisis.

Second, we cannot guarantee that next year the Journey will return to its old format. Covid-19 may well still present a problem for travel. We are all living with a lot of uncertainty and we do not know whether our budget will be the same next year. As EIT Climate-KIC is funded by the EU, we will have to adapt to the programme to the circumstances we find ourselves in next year.

Third, if there is a significant number of MS students deferring to next year, due to the limited number of attendees we can accept in the programme each year, we may not be able to guarantee a place for Journey 2021.

For Utrecht University students only, the university decided that 2020 is the last year the Journey grade and ECTS can be included as an official elective course on the academic transcript. If you have questions about this, please contact the Utrecht Master School Coordinator.

To wrap-up another long email to you, we would like to thank all students who have written to us in the past two weeks - we really value direct feedback! We hope the new Journey format and the offer to Master School students addresses most of the points raised. If you still have further questions or suggestions, please feel free to contact the central Master School team or your local university coordinator.

Kind Regards,

Master School Team