Press release

Verviers / ULg joint projects: the Walloon capital of water is immersing itself in university skills

The city of Verviers and the University of Liège will work jointly on organising, in the Walloon capital of water, a programme of diversified activities during the first quarter of 2012.

The programme consists of major lectures given by ULg professors and/or researchers (the first lecture, by the Rector Bernard Rentier, is scheduled for February 6 at the Espace Duesberg), pedagogical activities targeted towards water management and quality (March 20 at the Polygone de l’eau, in the context of the World Water and Climate Week), and a transfer (March 14 and 15 to the Grand Théâtre de Verviers) of the 10^th edition of Imagésanté, the Liège International Film and Health Festival.

As a reminder, the University of Liège has been present within Verviers since 2004, with the House of the ULg (rue de Heusy 21), a site well known by Verviers students and their parents, who can regularly take part there in information sessions on university studies and related professions.

Still modest at the beginning of the project development, this programme has as a background the wish, expressed by both the local commune and academic authorities, to make university skills available to the various populations of the Verviers region (youth, parents, active senior citizens, etc.).

This programme has been developed by a group bringing together, beyond the City representatives and university authorities, ULg professors who live in the Verviers area, amongst whom is Professor Jacques Boniver, who co-ordinates the group. Both the City and the University have the objective to sustain over time these joint initiatives at Verviers and to intensify the programme of activities from the 2012 second quarter onwards.

For Claude Desama, the Mayor of Verviers and ULg Honorary Professor, ‘this joint project with the ULg meshes with the wish to structure the Liège metropolis, of which Verviers is the second major economic, administrative and cultural centre. It also aims to strengthen the ties with the ULg and secondary and higher education teaching in the Verviers region, with the perspective notably of the provincial campus which will come into existence in 2014-2015.’

All the information about the programme of activities www.verviers.be/ulg

Convergent trajectories

Verviers-Liège, hardly 32 km separate the two great cities. It is not just this proximity which brings them together. There is also, in no particular order, a common history within the Principality of Liège, early industrialisation given momentum by the same family (Cockerill), the same challenges today of economic redevelopment, the same opening up to multiculturalism, etc. Like Liège, Verviers has offered and continues to offer great names to the arts, to the sciences, to sport, and the social, economic and political life of our country...

PROGRAMME – 1st QUARTER 2012
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See the presentation triptych in PDF format

Several figures on the presence of Verviers at the ULg

• 75% of the students domiciled in the Verviers arrondissement enrolled in a Wallonia-Brussels Federation university are at the ULg (Source : CReF, 2009-2010)
• 2547 students enrolled at the ULg are domiciled  in the Verviers arrondissement, which represents 12% of the students enrolled at the ULg (Source : ULg, 2011-2012).
• At the ULg, the students from the Verviers arrondissement are primarily enrolled in the Faculty of Medicine (19%), Philosophy and Letters (18%) or at the HEC-ULg Management School (15%).
• Personnel: 334,6 FTEs are domiciled in the Verviers arrondissement, in other words 7% of the total number of FTEs at the ULg.
• 8% of the ULG’s academic staff and 8% of the research and contract personnel are domiciled in the Verviers arrondissement.