Campus Europae Newsletter, March 2010

Table of contents

  • Making plurilingual professionals in a monolingual setting

  • Fast Facts

    • 2010 Board of Directors meeting

    • Campus Europae present at MOLAN partner meeting

    • University of Novi Sad hosted the Danube Rectors Conference

    • New St Peterburg pocket guide online

  • Upcoming events
    • Board of Directors Meeting
    • Hook Up! Meeting
    • Humanities Subject Committee Meeting
    • Education and Teacher Training Subject Committee Meeting
    • Student Council Plenary Meeting
    • Engineering Subject Committee Meeting
    • Natural Sciences Subject Committee Meeting

Making plurilingual professionals in a monolingual setting

The University of Luxembourg hosted the fourth scientific conference on Multilingual Universities from the 4th to the 6th February 2010, in which a case study about Campus Europae was presented by Professors Estela Pereira, Gilliam Moreira and Wilfried Hartmann. Their presentation focused on the complex issue of “making plurilingual professionals in a monolingual setting” and started by taking in consideration the ramifications of Europe turning its multitude of languages into an asset and the underlying necessity that professionals of all fields will be able to communicate in at least 3 to 4 languages. In spite of the fact that most European countries are to some extent multilingual, most higher education institutions are monolingual with variable use of English as additional lingua franca. Transforming themselves into bi- or multilingual institutions poses major challenges to universities, not least those of preserving their cultural, linguistic and academic identity and maintaining high levels of educational achievement in an age of internationalisation. Meanwhile Campus Europae supports individual universities as they face these challenges by fostering the development of a multilingual/intercultural campus based on strong curricular articulation and the teaching / learning of its participant languages, in which students can flow easily within their study fields.  The presentation also showed how universities and students benefit from CE, how the project works in practice and how personal and institutional multilingualism are fostered.

The findings presented at the conference were based on questionnaires and interviews that collected data on the experience of about 500 exchange students between the 18 universities of the network during the last 4 years, spending at least 10 months at a foreign university and studying in a foreign language, and relating the subjective impression to the scientific and linguistic achievement. A more detailed study case focused on the students exchanged under the aegis of Education and Teacher Training subject committee: this is an area which is considered to be a typical national affair, often disregarding students with different linguistic backgrounds. The study also shows how even in the complex structures of teacher training it is possible to successfully study in a difficult language setting, to acquire not only a new language but to gain insight in knowledge useful for the future professional work in the home country, notably when multilingual skills will enable education professionals to cope with the increase of mobility within Europe as well as situations that steam from ever increasing migratory movements.

The study also shows some of the impacts which are felt within the institutions which participate in CE: student mobility rates rise and diversify; more and different languages are spoken, taught and learnt; strategies are found for dealing with the increasing diversity and to adjust bureaucratic systems. Bottom-up processes of change develop which play their part in the transformation of Europe’s institutions towards a multilingual/ multicultural paradigm. This is particularly pertinent at a time when institutions feel obliged to enhance their international and European dimensions in order to meet externally defined targets and benchmarks which identify institutions as more or less ‘successful’ in the international arena.

Fast facts

2010 Board of Directors meeting

The 2010 European University Foundation Board of Directors meeting will be held in Luxembourg on the upcoming 15th of March. Alongside with the stocktaking of ongoing projects in the areas of recognition and language learning the Board will analyse the impact of the economic crises on the internship programme, decide about the last steps of implementation of the CE Degree and review internal quality assurance procedures. Furthermore the Board will elect a new President and welcome speeches from MEP’s Doris Pack and Leonidas Donskis on academic mobility and human rights in higher education..

Campus Europae present at MOLAN partner meeting

The fourth MOLAN partner meeting was held at the University of Thessaloniki from 12-14 February 2010. The European University Foundation is a member to the project, which is funded by the European Union, since 2008. MOLAN aims at collecting and exchanging good practices for the motivation of language learners. The meeting in Thessaloniki served to take stock of the activities since the beginning of the project and give a final impetus for the last year of the 3-year project. In the framework of MOLAN Campus Europae is one of the case studies at university level providing valuable experience in order to analyze the motivation of students to study languages during an international study year.

University of Novi Sad hosted the Danube Rectors Conference

The University of Novi Sad hosted the Danube Rectors conference from the 4th to the 6th of February 2010, with student mobility being one of the key reflection and discussion topics.

Prof. Fuada Stanković, former rector of the University of Novi Sad stressed the importance of mobility in the quality of teaching and researching, as well as on the importance of ensuring a qualitative rewarding mobility experience. This qualitative aspect is deeply interlinked with the length of the stay abroad, which should ideally be one of one study year. Prof. Stanković added that universities must engage with “internationalisation” against an economic background of “globalisation”, a position reiterated by Prof. Lászlo Komlósi, from the University of Pécs. His presentation focused in the relation between the idea of the European university since 1088 and the implication and needs of modern societies and the targets European mobility targets. Furthermore Campus Europae was one of the presented study cases, with Professors Neda Mimic-Dukic and Vladimir Katic presenting the experiences of the Natural Sciences and Engineering subject committees respectively.

All conference presentation and other documents are available for consultation here.

New St Peterburg pocket guide online

The Campus Europae Pocket Guides are meant to provide exchange students with basic information on their host city/university in a very concise format, where the following information can be found:

  • how to best get to the city/university of destination
  • living and accommodation
  • registration at the university
  • bank account and mobile phones/communications
  • local Campus Europae contact persons (Coordinators, Professors and Student Representatives)

The CE pocket guide for St Petersburg is online here (pdf file)

Upcoming events

Board of Directors Meeting

Luxembourg, 15th March

Hook Up! Meeting

Kaunas, 25-28th March

Humanities Subject Committee Meeting

Alcalá, 16-17th of April

Education and Teacher Training Subject Committee Meeting

Ankara, 18-19th of April

Student Council Plenary Meeting

Luxembourg, 1st of May

Engineering Subject Committee Meeting

Ankara, 14-15th of May

Natural Sciences Subject Committee Meeting

Luxembourg, 14-15th of May

The next Campus Europae newsletter is due for the 1st of April. To unsubscribe please visit this link.