KSU presented in Glasgow the experience of university resilience and development under the conditions of war and relocation
At the European Association for International Education EAIE 2026 Conference and Exhibition, a separate panel dedicated to Ukraine took place - «Universities as drivers of national recovery: lessons from Ukraine for crisis-affected regions».
Participants in the discussion included Deputy Minister of Education and Science of Ukraine Mykola Trofymenko, head of Cormack Consultancy Group Charles Cormack, and representative of the European University Association Henriette Stoeber.
"The very fact of such a panel appearing at the largest higher education international event in Europe is important. Ukrainian universities today are speaking with the European academic community not only about the support they need. We are talking about the experience that we can already pass on to others: the experience of resilience, international partnership, digital transformation, and the preservation of education during the war," – noted KSU Rector Oleksandr Spivakovsky.
The second discussion was dedicated to the opportunities and results of Erasmus+ in Ukraine. The head of the National Erasmus+ Office in Ukraine Svitlana Shitykova presented the experience of Ukrainian universities in implementing program projects and their impact on the transformation of Ukrainian higher education.
Three Ukrainian universities also presented their experience: V. N. Karazin Kharkiv National University - in the context of international credit mobility, university alliances, and Jean Monnet; Bukovinian State Medical University - regarding the opportunities of Capacity Building in Higher Education, particularly in medical education; Kherson State University - our experience in implementing institutional projects.
Professor, Vice-Rector for International and Scientific-Pedagogical Work Alla Tsapiv delivered a presentation titled «Asymmetric Resilience: How European Partnership Helped Kherson State University Survive, Adapt, and Develop under the Conditions of War and Relocation».
"And this is perhaps the most accurate formulation of the path we have traveled.
In 2022, the university was forced to relocate. We lost physical infrastructure, our community became geographically dispersed, usual educational and administrative processes were disrupted, and academic mobility was significantly limited. But thanks to our own resilience and the support of European partners, we managed to preserve the most important thing - the academic community and the quality of education. It was international partnership that became one of the resources for our transition from survival to adaptation, and from adaptation to development," – emphasized Oleksandr Spivakovsky.
In the presentation, Alla Tsapiv showed this not with general words, but through specific Erasmus+ projects that are changing the university.
Academies4Ukraine helps to preserve the memory of war witnesses as part of institutional and national resilience, exchange European practices of universities' work during the war, and support the mental health of students.
SMART-PL creates conditions for individual educational trajectories, academic mentoring, and personalized hybrid learning, which is especially important for a geographically dispersed university community.
BURN formed the Center for Psychological Resilience and Wellbeing at KSU, develops the competencies of our specialists in crisis psychology, and integrates European practices of psychological support into the daily life of the university.
And, of course, the project Erasmus+ DigiUni – The Digital University – Open Ukrainian Initiative («Digital University – Open Ukrainian Initiative»). Its result is intended to be the integrated digital educational ecosystem DigiPlatform, which combines high-quality digital content and supports the continuity of learning regardless of where students and teachers are physically located.
But we are already talking about a new stage.
In 2026, KSU's international project portfolio was supplemented by three new projects.
DUAL-UA - development and scaling of dual higher education in Ukraine, creation of micro-qualifications, regional centers for dual education, and quality criteria for dual programs.
DSHub - development of a regional hub for engineering, mathematics, and natural sciences, modern STEM courses, and practice-oriented learning.
SECURE - strengthening the expertise of universities in crisis management, specifically through a joint course on war, crisis, and institutional changes, and the exchange of experience with European partners.
Separately, we presented our next ambition - the project RESCUE. The project application received 83 out of 100 points and entered the reserve list. This is a very high result, although the project has not yet received funding.
"For me, RESCUE is particularly interesting in its logic. If DigiUni is about the digitalization of the educational environment, then RESCUE takes the next systemic step - towards the digitalization of university management and the quality of education. It is about management decisions based on verified data and continuous digital monitoring of educational and institutional processes. In terms of ambition, this could become for the management transformation of universities the same systemic step that DigiUni is for the digital educational space.
KSU has traveled the path from a university that was helped to stand firm to a university that has its own unique experience and is ready to share it. It is not for nothing that the final thesis of the presentation sounded: «We are here not to ask, we are here to share»/«We are here not to ask. We are here to share».
And the interest in KSU's experience was very substantive," – emphasized Oleksandr Spivakovsky.
After the presentation, Alla Tsapiv continued communicating with our current and potential partners. Among them were Vice-Rector of Adam Mickiewicz University in Poznań Rafał Witkowski, Professor Sabine Menu from the University of Strasbourg, who is a representative of the EPICUR alliance, as well as Dr. Michael Hall, Senior Lecturer at Munster Technological University in Ireland and coordinator of the partnership of the INGENIUM alliance of European universities.
"With Michael Hall, we are already connected by a specific story: this year he visited KSU in Ivano-im Frankivsk twice, and now the preparation for a visit of our university's delegation to Munster Technological University is underway.
From survival to resilience. From receiving help to exchanging experience. From individual partnerships to systemic international integration. This is the trajectory I see for Kherson State University.
I am sincerely grateful to Alla Tsapiv for representing our university, to the European Commission, the National Erasmus+ Office in Ukraine, the Ministry of Education and Science of Ukraine, and international partners - for the support and cooperation," – summarized Oleksandr Spivakovsky.
KSU Press Center