EU names Pitt ‘Center for Excellence’

A commission from the European Union named Pitt as a European Union Center for Excellence,… A commission from the European Union named Pitt as a European Union Center for Excellence, making it one of 11 U.S. universities to hold such a distinction.

The University competed with 23 other U.S. colleges for a three-year grant from the EU. The grant is worth 3.42 million euros, or about $4.6 million.

The EU will divide the grant money among the 11 winning schools in an effort to support research into U.S.-EU relations and EU policy initiatives.

When the program began in 1998, Pitt won the first national competition to host an EU studies center, and it has retained its hosting status since then, while some schools have lost it.

Every three years, the EU evaluates whether or not U.S. universities have spent their grant money wisely. Each year Pitt was evaluated, the University passed the test with more than average marks.

‘We tell them what we are going to do with their money,’ said Timothy Thompson, associate director of Pitt’s EU center.

He said that when the president of the EU commission, Jose Barroso, came to the United States in 2006, he chose to visit Pitt first.

The center also recently won a competition to receive the EU Delegation’s library.

The Delegation’s collection is the most extensive collection of public EU documents and publications in North America, and it is now at Pitt.

Academic programs sponsored by the center in conjunction with the University Center for International Studies include both undergraduate and graduate certificates in EU studies.

Like the University Center for International Studies, Pitt’s EU center doesn’t hire faculty members and is not considered an academic department.

‘The reason that the University Center for International Studies was set up this way was so that it could reach across disciplines,’ said Thompson.

Just like Pitt’s International Studies Center, the EU center can freely tap the resources of Pitt’s economics, political science or history departments in order to more thoroughly study the EU.

Thompson also emphasized that a study of the EU is becoming more important every year, as the EU becomes a stronger and more significant political body on the world stage.

‘The European Union is the largest aid donor to the developing world,’ said Thompson.