Abstract:

The Erasmus Mundus Joint Master Degree in Sustainable Ship and Shipping 4.0 (EMJMD SEAS 4.0) is an integrated, international, and innovative 90 ECTS programme delivered in English and jointly developed by the SEAS 4.0 Consortium universities: University of Napoli Federico II (Italy), University of A Coruña (Spain), University of Zagreb (Croatia), and the Hamburg University of Technology (Germany). The consortium was funded by the EACEA in 2020 and has trained more than 80 students from 28 countries, distributed across four intakes between September 2021 and March 2026.

EMJMD SEAS 4.0 was conceived as an innovative alternative to traditional Naval Architecture and Marine Engineering curricula, integrating sustainability, efficiency, and Industry 4.0 principles into a naval architecture–based programme. The objective is to equip students with the state-of-the-art tools and competencies currently demanded by the maritime sector.

It was designed to combine the training requirements of the maritime industry with innovative teaching methodologies, with the primary objective of maximizing the employability of graduates. In this context, key industrial stakeholders were incorporated into the core structure of the consortium. Accordingly, more than 30 companies have contributed to teaching activities, provided internships, and participated in the supervision of thesis. As a result, more than 90% of the graduates have collaborated with industrial partners through internships or master’s thesis projects.

Furthermore, several innovative methodologies have been implemented to enhance interaction between industrial partners and students. Among these, two particularly relevant initiatives can be highlighted: workshop weeks and challenge weeks. During workshop weeks, students attended seminars, technical presentations, and short workshops delivered by representatives of leading companies. During challenge weeks, industrial partners proposed a relevant technical problem which student teams addressed over the course of one week, ultimately presenting their own proposed solutions.

In addition to the collaboration established within the master framework, the partnership among the participating institutions has expanded considerably, encompassing a broader range of internationalisation activities. These initiatives have also aimed to strengthen interaction with the maritime sector and to disseminate the technical areas in which EMJMD SEAS 4.0 has become a reference programme. Such activities include, among others, the development and successful implementation of two EU-funded Blended Intensive Programmes (BIPs), held in Spain in 2025 and in Italy in 2023, in which industrial partners also played a central role.

The results presented in this paper expand upon those previously reported at INTED 2026 concerning the main characteristics of EMJMD SEAS 4.0. In the present work, greater attention is devoted to aspects related to student satisfaction with the programme and a comparison with the average outcomes of the EMJMD initiative. In particular, students’ perceptions of the aforementioned innovative methodologies (workshop and challenge weeks), their evaluation of industry participation, and the overall effectiveness of the programme in preparing them to address emerging challenges in the maritime sector are analysed in detail. These elements provide a comprehensive overview of the key characteristics and outcomes of the EMJMD SEAS 4.0 programme.

Keywords:

Engineering, internationalization, Erasmus Mundus, Naval architecture, joint degrees.