Higher education student and staff mobility projec..
Higher education student and staff mobility project
Start date: Jun 1, 2014,
End date: May 31, 2016
PROJECT
FINISHED
The University of Humanistic Studies (UvH) is a small university (550 students and 100 employees), which was founded in 1989. Because of its unique nature and content the UvH has long given priority to the building up of the university and the discipline of Humanistic studies. Internationalization is an activity that the UvH has taken on only recently. In 2011 the UvH acquired its first Erasmus Charter and the first Erasmus grants were awarded in 2012-2013. Internationalization is still in its infancy at the UvH and at the moment the UvH has a limited number of inter-institutional agreements which make exchange possible, until recently focused mainly on staff exchange. However, the UvH has a longstanding agreement with Utrecht University (UU), which allows UvH-students to go on exchange through the UU. The available knowledge about internationalization at the UvH is still relatively limited, but gradually increasing. The UvH Erasmus coordinators perform the tasks of the International Office.
Goals for 2014-2016: to further develop internationalization and making it better known within the organization, increase the number of bilateral agreements and increased mobility of students and teachers, starting inbound (student) mobility, to further develop supporting processes and conditions, acquire the support of the management.
Results
Policy development
In policy terms a number of important steps were taken in 2014-2016. For example the size of the staff available for internationalization has been increased, the newly established Commision for internationalization (education) has started its work in 2015-2016 and during a UvH seminar the participants gave high priority to the subject-matter of globalization, which also underlines the intrinsic importance of internationalization for the UvH. Furthermore, a policy document has been presented in which the current state of affairs is described regarding internationalization and the outlines are given of an updated vision on internationalization at the UvH. As a result internationalization has come more to the attention of the management, including the importance of increased financial resources. The policy document is one of the source documents for the new strategic plan, in which internationalization will be one of the main topics.
Mobility
The goal of increasing the number of mobility’s in 2014-2016 has not been achieved. In this period a total of two scholarships for staff mobility (STA) have been granted. There is no clear explanation for this result, apart from the fact that with small numbers small deviations have large effects. (For more information see 3 and 5.2).
In 2014-2016 less teachers than expected have gone abroad with a teaching assignment (STA) and there has been no outgoing mobility for staff training (STT). Inbound student mobility (SMS) has started as planned, and in 2015-2016 for the first time two foreign exchange students participated in the UvH education. In preparation four English spoken courses were developed in 2015 and the English-language section of the website for education and external students was launched. The outbound student mobility (SMS) was taken care of by Utrecht University. Very surprisingly there were no students who applied for a scholarship for an internship abroad (SMT).
Inter-institutional agreements
From autumn 2015, the increase in the number of inter-institutional agreements is addressed more systematically, and the first result is a new agreement that will be signed in 2016.
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