The University hosted its third Internationalisation forum on 22 January.
Jointly organised by International Development and the three faculties, the Forum provided an opportunity for each faculty to showcase an internationalisation activity from within one of their schools. This year, presentations came from the Schools of Arts, History and Architecture who showcased a very worthwhile joint venture undertaken in Oslo, which involved recruitment activities and supporting lectures and seminars.
Dr Dan Lloyd, Reader in the School of Biosciences, gave an interesting presentation on Summer Schools which are an excellent way for students to get a taste for their subject area and to get a feel of Kent. Going forward, Kent will be offering more and more opportunities to take part in these types of initiatives.
We were delighted to welcome representatives from Ghent University. Frederik de Decker, Head of the International Relations Office, presented the concept of international/intercultural learning outcomes/competences: how can these be defined, how to measure these, and what is the impact on internationalisation.
Senior Lecturer Lisa Dickson showcased how Kent Law School has taken internationalisation on board. Its processes are sometimes more complex due to accreditation issues, and so it was useful to see another way of breaking down some of these barriers in a very competitive and challenging market.
The new Internationalisation Award was announced, which recognises and rewards schools that are actively engaged in, and have a demonstrable track record in strategic innovation in internationalisation. Details of this new initiative will be circulated shortly.
Senior Deputy Vice-Chancellor Professor David Nightingale said that the Forum was a success, well attended, and most interesting. He noted that, while the University has some really excellent examples of embracing internationalisation, further work is needed to embed this into everything Kent does. The recruitment was welcomed of the new Dean for Internationalisation, Dr Anthony Manning, who will be leading on writing the Internationalisation Strategy 2015 for the next phase in Kent’s growth.
Copies of the presentations can be found on the Internationalisation SharePoint site.
Additional information about Ghent:
Ghent has been a strategic partner of Kent since 2008 and we continue to build on this relationship through various initiatives such as, staff and student exchanges, joint doctoral training workshops and the Kent-Ghent call. This has just been launched again for 2015. This call aims to support joint Kent-Ghent projects by funding mobility between colleagues at the two institutions (for example short-term staff/student exchange, seminars, workshops, preparatory meetings to establish longer-term collaboration such as double degrees, joint research projects). The deadline for the next call is 2 March 2015. Ghent is also a fellow member of the SGroup European Universities Network and we will continue to work with it on various activities associated with this.