STEM education emerged in the late 20th century to promote technological literacy and integrate scientific disciplines. Later, with a growing emphasis on creativity and innovation, STEM evolved into STEAM. In Lithuania, this model is implemented through educational reforms, strategic initiatives (Millennium Schools, 2025; EU Structural Funds projects, 2025), curriculum updates (School 2030, 2021), and the establishment of STEAM centers.

Between 2021 and 2023, ten STEAM centers were established across different regions to develop 21st-century competencies (National Education Agency, 2022). These centers promote hands-on learning, interdisciplinary skills, and experimentation, strengthening ties between education, business, and science.

As regional educational innovations, STEAM centers transform curriculum content and school collaboration models. The case study of the Marijampolė Regional STEAM Open Access Center assesses how this model impacts educational processes and student learning experiences. Through document analysis, statistical data, and focus group research, the study examines how STEAM centers support national education strategies.

STEAM centers enable students to apply theoretical knowledge in practice, foster interdisciplinary learning, and integrate modern teaching methodologies with labor market needs. They also enhance teachers’ professional competencies through continuous training and innovative pedagogical practices.

In conclusion, STEAM centers are becoming a key part of the educational ecosystem, fostering sustainable partnerships and enhancing student motivation. Increasing attendance, expanding teacher training programs, and growing municipal support indicate a systemic transformation, making learning more interactive, experiential, and innovative.

Edge in its spatial sense is the environment in which the end of an order that vanishes occurs. An intermediate territory, transition to another order that operates with other rules that make up a space of mixed, hybrid and shared concretion; and therefore rich, complex and potentially resilient to its operability in critical situations. A true knowledge-generating laboratory and opportunity space to study its impact as a geostrategic area of study. A conscious fragile and possible ecosystem, condenser and interface, common border, physical connection and logic of liminal territories.

The European Reform University Alliance (ERUA) is an alliance of European universities that takes value from the liminal. Formed by innovative communities located in countries, regions or urban areas on the margins, these academic territories are characterized by the hybrid coexistence of specific socio-cultural realities, economic models and geographical ecosystems, which coexist in an agreed space.

The ERUA community aims to overcome its challenges by sharing innovative instruments and policies, actively participating in critical self-reflection, questioning established practices and exploring innovative approaches to transcend these limitations, offering valuable perspectives on their experiences, such as an open system, capable of collaborating strategically and interacting with other alliances while maintaining their distinctive identity, providing a unique and value perspective for its coexistence with neighboring cultures.

It is a new strategic framework, which values peripheral territories, for its contribution to European policies. From the perspective of territories-universities to the edge.

The contribution has a dual purpose: First, it aims to discuss the need for a Inetrdisciplinary and Transdisciplinary approach in science and education, build upon a new set of ideas (new paradigm) in thinking and cognition, developped in Edgar Morin’s Theory of Complex thougth. Secondly, the text makes a connection between Morin’s Method and a specific educational project – the International Travelling University PLACE FOR FUTURE, in order to illustrate the possibilities for transdisciplinary education and knowledge in an academic milieu. The thesis is that an еpistemological revolution is required to meet the challenges of 21st century with the need of a genuine planetary and humanistic Education for the 21st century. At the same time, the approach is not pеrceived as an educational panacea or a ready-made model to follow, but as a path to an open and inclusive education process, which is valued in experience and communication with the Otherness, through a connection between the local and the global.