In 2017, six universities came together to form a unique collaborative alliance. On the basis of several established bilateral ties of cooperation, they formed a network to pursue their common interests. The Global Polytechnic Education Alliance (GPEA) set out to address distinctive, highly impactful opportunities throughout Europe and the Americas to successfully assemble the proper resources and skills from among its members to provide long-term solutions for the improvements of overall learning environments, educational experiences, and outcomes for the students, faculty and community partners and stakeholders.
The GPEA is an inclusive and impartial convener of academic, industry, and government alliance member stakeholders, which formulate educational opportunities and applied research and potential solutions on a national and regional scale in STEM and other disciplines. The five current members working together with Purdue Polytechnic Institute are:
Darmstadt University of Applied Sciences, Darmstadt, Germany
Lucerne University of Applied Sciences and Arts, Lucerne, Switzerland
Technological University Dublin, Dublin, Ireland
University of Wisconsin-Stout, Wisconsin, USA
Utah Tech, Utah, USA
Joint initiatives are a regular summer school addressing various topics in the field of sustainability, an annual research meeting to develop topics and ideas for joint research and an annual conference – “Polytechnic Summit” which was held at Utah TECH in June of 2023. Of specific interest are the shared ideas about applied academic education which all partners pursue as a main focus of teaching and research.