Higher education student and staff mobility project (2014)

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 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. Often 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.
The University of Pisa began its Erasmus experience in the late ‘80s in the then context of 11 countries. At each opportunity to increase the number of partners in the Erasmus framework it has done so, first in western then in eastern and central Europe, and more recently in Turkey and with the newly eligible Balkan partners.The present Erasmus mobility has as its objective that of making it possible for all students and professors to engage in mobility if they wish, and to remove barriers to full use of the opportunities offered by Erasmus. In a large generalist university such as the university of Pisa, the strategy is not to give priority to any one disciplinary area or category of students, but rather to coordinate and extend the good practice established in the areas that have proved particularly active in Erasmus to the other subject areas. The subject areas of Humanities, Engineering, Natural, Social and Applied Sciences have consolidated particularly successful mobility programmes, for both the first and the second cycles. 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.
Concerning the number of participants, we planned a total of 575 (both students and staff) and we achieved a total number of 715.
Most of the growth regarded the student mobility for traineeships and studies between Programme Countries.
The countries best represented, for both study and traineeship, were: Spain, Germany, France and UK. The average duration of achieved student mobility was 5 months. Students in mobility were mostly females, two of which had special needs.

Coordinator:  UNIVERSITÀ DI PISA  (Italy) 

Start date: 01-06-2014

End date: 30-09-2015

EU Grant: 1.152.207 €

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