Project for higher education student and staff mobility between Programme Countries and Partner Countries (2018)

Unipi Team Leader: Francesco Marcelloni, Vice-Rector for International Cooperation and Relations

The KA107 2018 project was designed to expand cooperation between University of Pisa (UNIPI) and Western Balkans, Southern Mediterranean and Central Asia countries, as well as to start new collaborations with Russian Federation and Canada. The project is part of UNIPI internationalisation strategy and it contributed to educational and research goals pursuits of students and faculty members of the universities involved.The 2018 project involved 21 higher education institutions in 9 countries.
The University of Novi Sad UNS (Serbia) from the Western Balkans was a partner in Credit Mobility (ICM) since the first call. The current project, like the previous ones, has had very positive results, allowing UNS to reach the internationalisation levels set at the national level by the Strategy of Educational Development. The two Albanian universities, Albanian University of Tirana and University of Tirana, joined the project in order to consolidate the partnership with UNIPI at the educational and scientific level.
The KA107 project assesses UNIPI commitment to the building up of the Central Asia Higher Education Area, along the same lines of the European. One of the Central Asia partner is Kyrgyzstan with its universities International University of Kyrgyz Republic IUK and Naryn State University NSU, again project partners since the first call, thanks to which they were able to become leaders in ICM and acquire the practical knowledge to apply Bologna process and quality in higher education principles; another Central Asia partner is Tajikistan, where the partnership involved three universities: Tajik State University of Commerce TSUC, Khatlon State Medical University KHSMU and the Institute of Economy and Trade IET TSUC. Tajik universities see the partnerships offered by KA107 programme as an opportunity to improve students and teaching staff training, which will have a positive impact on the modernisation of higher education. TSUC improved its position in national rankings from sixth to third place. KHSMU and IET TSUC were taking part in the programme for the first time, the first one with staff mobility only, with the aim of improving the health curricula in order to increase competitiveness on national and international scene, considering its young establishment that dates back to 2016; IET TSUC intends to use individual mobility to achieve the level of internationalisation envisaged by the "Strategic directions for improving the competitiveness of HEIs".
Four universities of the Russian Federation have taken part in the project: Saint Petersburg State University SPbU; State Higher Educational Institution People's friendship University of Russia RUDN, The Russian Presidential Academy of National Economy and Public Administration RANEPA, Moscow State Institute of International Relations MGIMO. All the universities have a strong international profile and the cooperation with UNIPI is part of their strategy to strengthen relations with Europe.
From the southern Mediterranean we have had three universities from Morocco ‒ Université Cadi Ayyad UCA, Hassan II University of Casablanca UH2C, and Université International de Rabat UIR ‒ and three from Tunisia: Carthage University UCAR, University of Kairouan UNIV-K and Université de Tunis El Manar UTM. The primary objective of the Moroccan universities is to develop teaching and research internationalization; moreover, they have adopted the ECTS system. With this project, the Tunisian universities wanted to strengthen cooperation with the University of Pisa in various fields: UCAR in rural engineering, UTM in biotechnology and UNIV-K in business and management.
As far as Canada is concerned, University of Calgary UCalgary and York University YU were involved to strengthen collaboration with UNIPI in biology and computer studies. From Ethiopia, Samara University SU, in its second project with UNIPI, has focused on staff mobility to improve quality of its teaching and attract students from the rest of the country.
66.67% of the mobilities were completed. The outbreak of COVID-19 that gradually spread around the world heavily influenced the development of the project activities, generating a strong decrease in the number of mobilities implemented. Incoming staff mobilities were the most affected, with nearly all planned event cancelled, while outgoing staff mobilities ‒ though some of them was also cancelled ‒ had major spin-offs in science and teaching. In-presence study mobilities were flanked by virtual study mobilities, seen as the only option to face the mobility crisis created by Covid-19.

Coordinator:  UNIVERSITÀ DI PISA  (Italy) 

Start date: 01-06-2018

End date: 31-07-2021

EU Grant: 182.943,64 €

Project website: http://erasmuspluska107.unipi.it/