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Higher education student and staff mobility projec..
Higher education student and staff mobility project
Start date: Jun 1, 2015,
End date: Sep 30, 2016
PROJECT
FINISHED
The University for Foreigners of Siena is a university with a strong international vocation. All of our undergraduate degree courses, master’s degrees, master programs, postgraduate schools and certifications of teaching competences are open to Italian and foreign students. They include courses in teaching and promoting Italian language and culture, linguistic and cultural mediation and translation in the tourism business. The Italian language and culture courses are intended for foreigners, who may also sit the Certificate of Italian as a Foreign Language (CILS) exams.
The University for Foreigners of Siena promotes and encourages the international dimension of research and training, the processes of meeting, dialogue, mediation between people with different languages and cultures. Its aim is to promote the civil and peaceful coexistence that arises from mutual recognition and mutual respect.
The University is therefore committed to the spread of multilingualism and multiculturalism. At the University for Foreigners of Siena students can learn European languages including English, French, German and Spanish as well as non-European languages such as Arabic, Chinese, Japanese and Russian to become a professional in the teaching, tourism, translation, economics, legal and sociological fields.
That is why internationalization and mobility are our keywords: we promote international mobility for all of our students starting from the beginning of their studies; we provide a large number of partner Universities for spending the Erasmus student periods (60 partner Universities for the 2015/2016 academic year, with about 150 available places); we offer placements abroad for students on degree courses, scholarships for foreign students and free Italian language courses for incoming Erasmus students.
Our international strategies involve researchers, professors and students in first, second and third cycles and include study and training, and aims to reinforce basic skills, to acquire advanced skills, particularly valuable for knowledge-intensive jobs and research.
At regional, national and international levels, the University for Foreigners of Siena promotes cultural links with other universities, cultural institutions and research bodies, collaborations with professionals in the areas of culture and scientific research abroad.
The number of students' international mobilities is increasing every year, both for study and for traineeship abroad, especially for the "Mediazione linguistica e culturale" first cycle degree. During the 2015/2016 academic year, we moved 93 outgoing students for study (of whom 10 to Switzerland) and 58 for traineeship (of whom 16 recent graduates), 55 incoming students for study and 3 for traineeship. As far as the teaching staff mobility is concerned, we moved 7 outgoing teachers and 13 incoming.
All the international mobility activities have a strong impact and longer-term benefits on our University, by creating an international context with students from all over the world and a supportive environment for learning Italian and other European and non European foreign languages.