Université de Haute-Alsace

The UHA is a small Alsatian university in the heart of the Three Frontier Region. The University sees it as a point of honour to develop close links with each of its students but also with its partners whether they be local or international. The surrounding economic environment is very important because it was industry that created the Université de Haute-Alsace.

History

The UHA was officially founded on the 8th October 1975 and now incorporates 4 faculties, 2 engineering schools and 2 Institutes of Technology (IUTs) some of which pre-date the university itself. In fact, this is exactly the case with the two engineering schools (established in the 19th century) which were created in response to the needs of local industrialists for skilled manual workers. Ever since, the university has continued to expand and improve its education and training course portfolio and also to focus upon its research to feed into its learning and teaching programmes and enhance their professionalism and innovative nature.

Professionalisation and international relations

UHA has some 12% of its students on programmes involving apprenticeships – one of the highest rates in the whole of France – in order to enable a smooth transition into the professional workplace (some 3000 graduates per year), especially at Master’s level. Amongst these 11000 students more than 20% are from an origin outside France. This applies particularly to PhD students where 50% or more are in this category. Many bi and tri-national programmes have been put in place over the years with the particular advantage that students can undertake part of their educational programme in the other universities which are part of the Eucor - The Europeen Campus network : Karlsruhe, Basel, Fribourg and Strasbourg. In addition, UHA is also involved in many education and research partnerships with more than 150 universities worldwide, including the EPICUR alliance.

Associations with other establishments

In 2013, UHA finally entered into a formal relationship with the Université de Strasbourg (UNISTRA), the National Institute of Applied Sciences (INSA), the National University Library of Strasbourg (BNU), the National School for Water and Environmental Engineering of Strasbourg (ENGEES) and the National School of Architechture of Strasbourg (ENSAS) in order to create associated establishments. In 2016, the Rhine School of Arts (HEAR) was added to this list. Working together, these organisations can bring new solutions to problems that might be faced by students, administrative, teaching and research staff. They also seek to improve and adapt the regional education offer and propose new forms of partnerships between laboratories and research centres but also with institutional and enterprise partners.