The European Union Center has been a U.S. Department of Education Title VI National Resource Center (NRC) since 2003 and a Jean Monnet Center of Excellence through the European Union's Erasmus+ program since 2015.

As a Title VI NRC, the European Union Center supports foreign language and area studies at the University of Illinois — most notably through the Master of Arts in European Union Studies program — and provides outreach programs, professional development, and curricular assistance to K-12 teachers, community college and minority-serving institution (MSI) faculty, and the general public.

As a Jean Monnet Center of Excellence, the European Union Center promotes greater study and understanding of the EU and transatlantic relations in the U.S. The project supported by a 2022-25 Jean Monnet Center of Excellence grant, Sustainable Methods for Adapting and Adopting Regional Technologies (SMAART), focuses on the identification of best practices to encourage democratic interaction and adoption of new technologies among marginalized communities, urban and rural. By focusing on the European Green Deal and its policy and comparable initiatives by the U.S. federal government, SMAART aims at increasing the interest and collaboration between American and European scholars on questions of inequality, accessibility and sustainability.

Click on the links above to learn more about the European Union Center's grant-funded programming and activities.