Fantastic initiative. Higher education and research is a perfect area to experiment with new forms of online interaction platforms as it combines digital natives on the one hand and genuine content generators on the other. From the fediverse to the fediversity so to speak.

Hopefully the experiment will flurish and you will find many imitators around the world.

NB: Something I am sure you are aware that the fediverse is not just mastodon and it would be great to see more types of services interoperate