The foRMAtion project has been an intensive 3-year-long journey aiming to develop educational course and mentoring scheme for students, as potential RMAs, in higher education. We believe that our consortium successfully achieved this goal and went beyond its original undertaking.

We produced and tested 6 intellectual outputs which represented the core activities and outcomes of the project. All partners invested their expertise to develop high quality outputs that can be used, adopted & adapted free-of-charge by anyone. They are as follows:

We organised 3 trainings for the consortium members. The first training focused on identifying and discussing existing training opportunities for RMAs supporting the development of the international module. The second targeted the training of teachers who delivered afterwards the courses at partner universities. The third was organised for our partners’ mentors who then conducted the mentorship programme and hosted students in their offices. During the last public event in Brussels, the foRMAtion team also organised 2 additional trainings for the prospective Alliance-members, one about the international curriculum and one about the Mentorship Programme.

The foRMAtion courses lasting for two semesters were tested at 3 partners universities in Hungary, Portugal and Romania and attended by 70 students. The Mentorship Programme offered an exceptional traineeship opportunity for 6 students to live and work abroad, and receive mentoring from experiences RMA professionals.

Our Seasonal School provided opportunity for 12 higher education students to take part in an international mobility, learn about the RMA profession in practice and improve our Online Learning Platform.

So far, more than 25 people, both student and RMAs completed the online self-development tool and benefited from its 4 modules about the fundamentals of research management.

Although the foRMAtion project was heavily affected by Covid-19, we managed to hold all the public stakeholder events that was planned in the project in 2022. We welcomed more than 130 participants at our five stakeholder events altogether in person, not to mention the more than 400 online participants who followed our events from around the globe. Our guests included representatives of the European Commission, RMA experts from all continents, representatives of prestigious European and international higher education institutions and members of RMA organisations.

We believe that our efforts to make the RMA profession more recognised by developing a complex higher education and mentoring program in research management will have a lasting impact not only on the partners in the consortium, but on the wider European RMA community as well.

For the purpose of sustaining our achievements and deepen the connections within the foRMAtion community, we have launched our next initiative, foRMAtion Alliances. To learn more about how your organisation can become a member of the Alliances, and enjoy the benefits of an international RMA community, please visit the pages of the Educational Module Alliance and the Mentorship Alliance.