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Higher education student and staff mobility project
Start date: Jun 1, 2014, End date: Sep 30, 2015 PROJECT  FINISHED 

Gediz University offers 16 programs fully in English. Currently we have 6500 students from 95 countries. At least 10% of undergrad students are international students. International faculty members and Turkish faculty members with European and US doctorate degree offers quality education in English. We provide an international learning environment to our students. Erasmus+ program is one of the important components of our internationalization efforts. It's getting popular among our students. We believe that studying abroad in another university setting will improve our students knowledge and experience and broaden their horizon. Gediz University supports Turkey's membership to EU so that wants its students and staff to have an idea of being part of Europe. Erasmus+ is the best way to achieve it for students, teaching staff and personnel. With this idea in mind, Gediz University conducts the Erasmus+ program through International Relations Office and Department Erasmus Coordinators. In the 5th year of Erasmus program at Gediz, we get at least 200 application without many advertising. Profile of the applicants is very diverse. Female applicants are in majority. We send more students from 2nd and 3rd year students. Few students in their 4th year prefer to go for Erasmus. With new regulation, we are getting more application for training placement from graduate candidates. Without any discrimination, students from different nations can apply and get benefit from Erasmus program. Even Turkish students complain about it because international students have better English proficiency since they are coming from English medium background middle and high school education which gives them an advantage in Erasmus Language test. Initially we requested 50 student mobility, 40 training mobility, 20 staff and 10 personnel mobility from the Turkish National Agency during application period. We believed that they are going to grant our request as they do usually but something happened and National Agency announced the grants very late. It was total disappointment for all universities in Turkey. There were big budget cut in all mobility types. Bye the time grants announced we already sent more students than it's granted. That's why we have transferred grant from teaching staff and personnel mobility to students mobility. Our overall objective was to reach above numbers in each mobility types but unfortunately we ended up the reported numbers. Teaching and training mobility for staff grant has been used for student and training mobility. We actively used students who did Erasmus mobility in our recruitment meetings. They shared their experiences in different occasions and answered questions from prospective outgoing Erasmus students. It increased the popularity of Erasmus+ program. International Relations Office opened a stand during the "Clubs Meeting Program" at Gediz University which aims to get members for student clubs. It attracted many visitors as well. With all advertising activities and email announcements, Erasmus+ program is a dream for many students at our university. We believe that students who took place in the Erasmus+ mobility have gained invaluable experience not only in academic but also in their daily life. They are now capable of comparing EU and Turkey in many ways. It helps them to develop some ideas to solve the problems of Turkey. They can understand the European culture, economy, life style and mind set better after living in the EU society even though for couple of months. After talking with students, we observe that Erasmus+ mobility has changed these students life in a positive way. Some students failed to pass all courses and had to extend their stay at Gediz University but they do not complain about it. They think that it was worth to have such an experience. Erasmus+ has long-term impacts on lives of students and staff. Some students decided to study in EU for master's and Ph.D. programs while some others get job offers from the companies they did their Erasmus+ training mobility. Most of the students believe that having Erasmus mobility on their CV will increase chance of future employment. Staff members also got positive outcomes such as Erasmus IP project. One of nine project awarded by Turkish National Agency was our project and it was submitted by a teaching staff who visited the partner university and made connections there. We have similar outcomes from teaching mobility in different disciplines. In conclusion, Gediz University believes the usefulness of Erasmus+ Program by heart and supports Turkey's EU membership. Students, staff and personnel are getting close relation with European counterparts and having mutual benefits from this great mobility program. We wish to have more funding for the future so that more people meet with Erasmus+ program at Gediz University.
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