HEROES Steering Committee & Institutional Coordinators: Two days of strategic alignment and acceleration

The HEROES Steering Committee and Institutional Coordinators gathered on January 28–29, 2026 for an intensive two-day working meeting that combined strategic focus with strong partnership spirit. Despite the freezing temperatures outside, the warm welcome by VIKO immediately set the tone for open exchange and collaboration.

Following an energising ice-breaking session facilitated by Fontys, participants aligned on shared ambitions and explored concrete ways to accelerate progress. A recurring message resonated clearly across the group: HEROES is not just a project, but a long-term partnership.

On the first day, UCN presented the first set of collected data, offering a consolidated overview of the alliance’s impact to date through the HEROES Impact Report. This report was discussed as a key feedback mechanism to continuously refine activities and outputs. The consortium’s ambitions remain bold: reaching 60,000 students, developing 27 double/dual degrees, and launching one joint master programme, among others.

The Steering Committee translated these ambitions into tangible discussions around KPIs, mathematically breaking them down and asking Work Package leads to assess feasibility per higher education institution. Clear communication of these institute-level contributions will help make the KPIs concrete and actionable across the partners.

Day two focused on monitoring progress and implementation, including the introduction of a traffic-light system to support transparent tracking, presented by Thomas More on behalf of the Institutional Coordinators team. The governance structure, with regards to the decision making bodies: the Board of Presidents and the Steering Committee will be evaluated by the end of this year, and the Steering Committee formally approved the action points resulting from the quality assessment conducted by SEAMK.

The meeting concluded with an inspiring intercultural analysis presented by VIKO students, highlighting key insights about the HEROES community. The alliance was characterised as highly multilingual, people-focused, driven by human connection and relationships, and strongly globally minded; a powerful reflection of the values underpinning HEROES.

Together, these two days reinforced both strategic clarity and shared commitment, strengthening the foundation for the next phase of the HEROES Alliance.