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Description
The international relations that a university aims for and manages to develop, are among the main elements according to which an academic institution is evaluated by both a higher education assessment agency or by any interested party or stakeholder. SNSPA has always been interested in promoting this area and therefore encouraged more and more mobility projects. The EEA grants opportunity is a real chance to further increase the number of study and placement mobilities with partner countries.
Objectives:
- Increase the number of student and teacher mobilities between Romania and Norway;
- Raise participants’ awareness and understanding of new cultural experiences;
- Support students in reaching better learning outcomes (knowledge, skills and competences) with a view to improving their personal development and their employability in the European labor market;
- Enhance the participants’ foreign languages competence;
- Strengthen the institutional cooperation in higher education between Romania and Norway thus establishing structured, intensive and long-term cooperation;
- Ensure a better recognition of competences and skills gained through the learning periods abroad.
The most important achievement is the fact that the students from our university have the chance to study and to participate in different research projects in a different higher education system. At the same time, the Romanian and Norwegian professors have the great chance of sharing their knowledge and best practices.
Both partners will ensure the selection of students and staff, will monitor and assess the mobilities and will provide logistic support for mobilities.
The better the synergy between the fields of study and research of both the donor and the beneficiary, the more mobilities shall be able to be undergone for students at all study levels, and for educators and staff searching to improve their competences and share their experience.
Summary of project results
SNSPA and the University of South-Eastern Norway (USN) agreed to cooperate and support the beneficiaries and the activities planned within the project and to respect the principles and conditions of the EEA Grants guidelines.
USN is Norway’s fourth largest university and provides challenging study programmes and innovative teaching approaches that are closely linked to the demands of businesses and the needs of the society as a whole.
First, there is a need for underlining the objectives of the mobility project: increase the number of students’ and professors’ mobility between Romania and Norway; raise participants’ awareness and understanding of new cultural experiences; support students in reaching better learning outcomes (knowledge, skills and competences) with a view to improving their personal development and their employability in the European labor market; enhance the participants’ foreign languages competence; strengthen the institutional cooperation in higher education between Romania and Norway thus establishing structured, intensive and long-term cooperation and ensure a better recognition of competences and skills gained through the learning periods abroad, the mobility project ended with three mobility for students and no mobility for staff caused by the COVID-19 pandemic.
There are many benefits that our students got while studying abroad: the cultural enrichment and improved language skills, high-status qualifications, and a competitive edge to access better jobs. In the same time, studying abroad helped our students to expand their knowledge of other societies, languages, cultures and business methods, and to leverage their labor market prospects.
The most important achievement of this project is the fact that the students from our university had the chance to study and to participate in different research projects in a different higher education system, even in this complicated times caused by the COVID-19 pandemic.The carried out students’ and teachers’ mobilities allowed the further enhancement of an international learning environment in classrooms, based on a deeper understanding and tolerance of cultural differences.
The co-optation and participation of SNSPA in the European academic consortium CIVICA is a proof of the recognition of SNSPA''s identity as an institution of excellence and, equally, the result of our university''s involvement in the European education
Summary of bilateral results
In SNSPA, we currently undergo an universal internationalization movement backed up by a strong desire expressed by our students to study abroad at different universities. SNSPA has always been interested in promoting this area and therefore encouraged more and more mobility projects. Thus we believe that the EEA grants opportunity which presented itself was a real chance to meet our students’ expectation and further increase the number of study mobility with our Norwegian partner that can only enhance the level of knowledge of those benefiting from the EEA grants.Our partner, USN, not only has quickly embraced the expertise of the partner, but also provided students with the needed guidance to help them adapt to a system that is far more developed in technical terms.SNSPA, the home university, as one university coming from the academic field pertaining to administrative sciences, was able to provide a consistent expertise with regard to Public Administration reform, European integration, from which the partner could really extract knowledge for eventual comparative studies.The partnership has been signed for a three-year period, and both partners decided to prolong it as the bilateral relation has brought a lot of collateral activities that can only strengthen the two partners: international conferences, workshops and other events that explored the knowledge gathered through the initial exchange, and comparative analyses that were written by both parties and disseminated in common events. The COVID-19 pandemic outbreak, which began in early 2020, has dramatically affected higher education development in various aspects, including the activities planned in this project.