UCLouvain Charleroi

During the Leuven crisis in the 1960s, a transfer of the French-speaking part of the Catholic University of Louvain from Leuven to Charleroi, one of Belgium's largest cities though without any university,[3] is considered as one of the major alternatives to a relocation in Ottignies, which will later hold Louvain-la-Neuve.[4]

The Maison Georges Lemaître in the city center.

When the university is legally split in 1970, the Maison Georges Lemaître became property of the French-speaking University of Louvain.[2] It is a large neo-Gothic mansion, designed by architect Auguste Cador. It is located on boulevard Devreux, a few dozen meters from the birthplace of Georges Lemaître, which was located rue du Pont Neuf 10.[5] Georges Lemaître, the founder of the Big Bang Theory, was an alumnus of the Catholic University of Louvain.

Until 1995, courses of the University of Louvain Faculty of Economics, Social and Political Sciences and Communication in Charleroi were organised in the buildings of the Institut Saint-André, a secondary school located next to the Maison Georges Lemaître.[6][7] A violent fire on 7 March 1995 ravaged the secondary school,[8] which was rebuilt in 1997.[9] UCLouvain thus completely renovated the Maison Georges Lemaître in 1995,[10] and now concentrates most of its Caroloregian activity of teaching and research there.

In parallel and since 1975, the Catholic University Faculties of Mons (FUCaM), which were an independent university until 2011, have been offering programmes in economics and management sciences on the Sainte-Thérèse site of the Institut d'Enseignement secondaire complémentaire catholique (IESCA), in Montignies-sur-Sambre. Since 2005, following the founding of the Académie Louvain, these courses were integrated into the Louvain School of Management.[11] In 2009, the Charleroi-Europe Catholic College (of which IESCA is a member) co-founded the Haute École Louvain en Hainaut, a partner college of UCLouvain. This merger was shortly followed by the merger of the FUCaM with the University of Louvain in 2011. These two institutions currently share the Montignies campus.[12]

Since 2018, a third faculty has established itself in Charleroi: the Louvain School of Engineering. From 2020 onwards, it has been offering a bachelor's degree in computer science.[13]

UCLouvain offers master's degrees and university diplomas in management and fiscal sciences on the Montignies site.[7] Certificates in accounting and tax expertise exempt students from the entrance exams to the Belgian Institute of Company Auditors and the Institute of Chartered Accountants.[14]

The Maison Georges Lemaître houses various research centres as well as the Open Faculty of Economic and Social Policy (FOPES), which is a department of the Faculty of Economic, Social, Political and Communication Sciences of UCLouvain (ESPO) and organises a master's degree in economic and social policy.[15] It also serves as an exhibition centre[16] and research centre for CIRTES, the Interdisciplinary Centre for Research on Work, the State and Society.[7]

UCLouvain has also set up research centres at the Gosselies aeropole:[17] the Centre of Excellence in Information Technology (CETIC) serving as a centre of expertise for the development of Walloon companies and founded by UCLouvain with the universities of Namur and Mons,[18] as well as the Cenaero (Research Centre in Aeronautics) with the University of Liège and the Université libre de Bruxelles,[19] an institute for the development of aeronautics and space industry.[20]

In addition, the Gosselies cluster hosts three spin-offs from UCLouvain:[21] Cedit, a technology company, and since 2011, iTeos, a farmaceutical company founded within the de Duve Institute at UCLouvain Brussels Woluwe and which raised a capital of 75 million US dollars in 2018,[22] and Viridaxis, since 2011.[23]

UCLouvain also participates in the Interuniversity Certificate in Energy Electronics organised by Thales Alenia Space at the Open University of the Wallonia-Brussels Federation, which is based in Charleroi.[24]