Higher education student and staff mobility project (2015)

Unipi Team Leader: Alessandra Guidi, Pro Rector for Internationalization

The University of Pisa (UNIPI) is pursuing a policy of expansion of its commitment towards internationalisation, in terms of both quality and quantity. Our mobility partners have been chosen in several ways: some partnerships with like-minded universities have been developed on the basis of personal links of professors and researchers who have wished to add a staff and/or student mobility dimension to their existing cooperation. Often however key partnerships have been established as a result of the shared commitment to the various networks and large-scale European projects which the University of Pisa has coordinated or been a partner of.
Mobility partners are screened in practice for their correct and ‘virtuous’ use of ECTS. This has allowed the University of Pisa to build up through its many bilateral agreement a network of trusted Erasmus partners, in which all eligible countries are represented. This network is the result of the extension to new subject areas of existing agreements which have proved positive and of interest to the students.
Also, the University expanded its participation in Erasmus+ mobilty by joining a Consortium Traineeship, coordinated by the University of Padova, profitably for several years.
The University of Pisa aims at making it possible for all students and professors to engage in mobility if they wish, and removing barriers to full use of the opportunities offered by Erasmus.
In this perspective, the University has set aside a budget to cofinance Erasmus grants and has set up a cyber Portal, dedicated to Erasmus students, both incoming and outgoing, to make it easier for students, professors and administrative staff procedures related to mobility.
Our key objectives are to increase the incoming and outgoing student and staff mobility; to increase the number of programmes taught in English; to build up the mobility of non-teaching staff, which is particularly valuable in training the administrative support for internationalisation.
To meet these objectives this year we organized our first International Staff Training Week with staff coming from 6 different EU University.
Concerning the number of participants, we realized a total of 786 student mobilities (both for study and traineeship) corresponding to almost 15% increase as compared to the previous mobility. This increase is different between gender and attributable mainly to the mobility of male students approaching an increase of 20%.
The countries best represented, for both study and traineeship, were Spain, Germany, France, UK and Portugal only for study. The average duration of achieved student mobility was 5 months. Students in mobility were mostly females, two of which had special needs. Especially for students with special needs has been activated a reception desk in collaboration with the Unit of dedicated services for the integration of students with disabilities to Ateneo (USID).

Coordinator:  UNIVERSITÀ DI PISA  (Italy) 

Start date: 01-06-2015

End date: 30-09-2016

EU Grant: 1.210.121 €

Project website: https://unipi.erasmusmanager.it/studenti/