Campus Europae Newsletter, August 2011

Table of contents

  • Academic cooperation within Campus Europae – 2010/11 in a nutshell

  • Fast Facts

    • Ride for Your Rights is halfway across Europe!

    • Eurostudent and the social dimension of student mobility

    • Natural Sciences Subject Committee meeting report

    • Law Subject Committee meeting report

    • Business and Economics Subject Committee meeting report

    • Fraternité 2020 - rallying for a stronger Europe

    • Campus Europe Student Council wins YIA grant

  • Upcoming events
    • Ride for Your Rights closing cerimony
    • Biology and Biochemistry workgroups meeting
    • Seminar "Participation and Higher Education"
    • Humanities and Social Sciences Subject Committee meeting
    • Engineering Subject Committee meeting
    • Business and Administration Subject Committee meeting

Academic cooperation within Campus Europae – 2010/11 in a nutshell

The academic year that is now ending has been a particularly busy one for Campus Europae. We held the first Luxembourg Forum on Human Rights and Higher Education, met with MEP Prof. Leonidas Donski at the European Parliament for a public reflection on how can European Citizenship be best brought about, our ever-active Student Council is pedaling across Europe raising awareness for student mobility (see next article) and our various organs and workgroups have stepped up their efforts to provide our exchange students the best possible year abroad.

Our seven Subject Committees have been long been at the heart of the network, and it is hard to imagine how would Campus Europae look like without the commitment and support of the professors that compose them. All have been active throughout 2010/11, with 14 meetings held from September ’10 to July ‘11. Besides providing direct support and advice to the CE Movers the Subject Committees are also championing the development of ex-ante recognition pathways. By sorting out the equivalences across comparable study programmes prior to the exchange of students and making that information available online they enable the CE Movers to compose learning agreements which are more reliable and accurate. As of now such ex-ante recognition pathways are available for 14 academic subjects, six more than in 2009/2010. They are:

  • Architecture
  • Biochemistry
  • Biology
  • Computer engineering
  • Education and Teacher Training
  • Electronic and Electric engineering
  • History
  • History of Art 
  • Law
  • Mechanical engineering
  • Medicine
  • Physics
  • Political Sciences
  • Tourism

The ex-ante academic recognition is one of Campus Europae unique features, and while ensuring that the information provided remains up to date even as curricula change and ongoing work on new subjects are important challenges in their own right, the subject committees are already thinking about new challenges and projects. As 2010/11 ends the next academic year is already looking to be a fruitful one in with respects advancing academic cooperation within Campus Europae!

The ex-ante academic equivalences can be found online at http://matrices.campuseuropae.org.

Fast facts

Ride for Your Rights is halfway across Europe!

The Ride for Your Rights has already crossed Serbia, Croatia, Hungary, Slovakia, Austria, Czech Republic and Poland, and is continuing on its way towards Russia. The riders have been clocking many hundreds of km’s under stifling weather, but are adamant about keep on meeting students and politicians. They are spreading the message that was summarized in their Manifesto, which is online here.

A daily log of all Ride for Your Rights activities is available at  http://rideforyourrights.blogspot.com/.

Eurostudent and the social dimension of student mobility

The Eurostudent project has proven to be of the most potent ways to shed light on the shortcomings of the social dimension of European Higher Education, and it’s back. The fourth edition look into 25 countries and its synopsis indicators were released during a conference held in Copenhagen on the 15/16 June –the same week in which the European Commission announced it’s framework budget proposals for 2014-2020.

The coincidence is a happy insofar that the Eurostudent results should have decision makers doing some soul-searching on how to best invest the extra funds that will hopefully be allocated to student mobility, for the Eurostudent report reads:

“the proportion of students who have been enrolled abroad is lower among students from low social background; they are also planning to enroll abroad less frequently than their peers from high social background and are more frequently dissuaded by obstacles such as financial insecurities and a self-perception of language competencies being insufficient”

Is this an unalterable reality? The participants at the conference didn’t seem to think so, but a lot of work remains to be done in order for the social dimension of the EHEA to be more than a matter of rhetoric.

Natural Sciences Subject Committee meeting report

The first annual meeting of the Natural Sciences Subject Committee took place on May 27/28 at the Saint Petersburg State University, Russia. The Committee members enjoyed the warm hospitality of the host and Vice Rector for International Relations, who welcomed them on the first meeting day and expressed his enthusiasm regarding SPSU participation in CE. Choosing SPSU as a meeting venue was largely due to the fact that such an impressive university has to be more actively involved within the CE network, since it has so much to offer to both students and professors.

As it has now become the tradition, the Natural Sciences Subject Committee held its presentation of Campus Europae to prospective students from the Natural Sciences faculty, which was kindly delivered by Anna Datsun, a CE alumni from the Student Parliament. The presentation was very well received and the SPSU studies did not shied away from asking question to the professors from the partner universities in attendance!.

cenews_aug1

A partial view of the Natural Sciences Subject Committee at work

This meeting was special for many reasons. First of all, it marked the beginning of active participation of the University of Alcala, Spain, together with expanding the SPSU participation from only Physics sub-committee to Biology. An equally important milestone of the meeting was the participation of Prof. Lembit Pallas from the Tallin University of Technology, Estonia, which might be the beginning of activating the fourth workgroup within the subject-committee: environmental sciences. The Committee is definitely growing and we are witnessing the motto of expanding coming to reality. This naturally sets a more ambitious goal in front of the Committee: to raise the number of CE movers in the academic year to come.

cenews_aug2

Students from the St Petersburg State University attending the information session

Issues discussed at the meeting were various: from the usual concern around the matrices workflow, mobility and ECTS recognition, to equally active participation of all members. The added value of the meeting was having Prof. Estela Pereira who introduced several fresh ideas and supported the Committee’s work in every possible way. The unique opportunity that CE offers for the work of subject committees needs to be used to widen the scope of collaboration and improve the quality of mobility at all participating universities and in the areas not covered by the subject committees. Furthermore, enlarging the activities within the SC is our common goal. Some of the possible activities to achieve this were discussed: develop joint masters (either within a subject area or within interdisciplinary domains); develop joint research projects that may be used to offer master thesis work well adapted to a master program, or even to joint PhDs; compare and discuss the conditions for recognition of thesis work (total or partial number of credits); develop the characterization of learning outcomes for a specified degree and eventually relation with the EQF; joint project in procedures to evaluate student workload and comparison of results. The proposals deserve future consideration and mutual effort in seeking practical ways for their implementation. The dynamics and frequency of the committee meetings still remain to be discussed and eventually agreed upon to best satisfy the need for the continual and successful work.

Law Subject Committee meeting report

On 16 June the Subject Committee Law convened at Gazi University for its annual meeting. Following the signing of the comprehensive cooperation agreement in September 2010, the agenda was designed to follow up on the commitments expressed in that document. Accordingly, the work focused on preparing a join master program between the participating law faculties and furthering staff and PhD exchange. The joint LL.M. will be designed to replace mutual recognition on the graduate level while enabling CE movers to obtain their CE Degree. During the following months the concrete structure for the program will be designed and discussed during the next meeting, which will take place at the University of Novi Sad in spring 2012.

Business and Economics Subject Committee meeting report

The Business and Economics Subject Committee convened at the University of Alcalá on the 22nd of July for their last meting of the 2010/11 academic year. The representatives from eight member universities followed-up on the 32 students exchanged amongst themselves and discussed the update of the questionnaires on each other’s curricula. Furthermore they have analyzed the possibility of delivering Double Degrees to the CE Movers from 2012/13 onwards, given that the bulk of the curricular preparatory work is already in place. This matter will be central to their next meeting, which is scheduled for November 2011.

Fraternité 2020 - rallying for a stronger Europe

Fraternité2020 is a European Citizens' Initiative founded in 2010, which aims at promoting exchange programmes with a view of creating a united Europe at grass-roots level. It energetically advocates:

  • a rapid increase of the EU budget for exchange programmes: 20 billion Euros by 2020
  • opening up the European Voluntary Service for all European citizens
  • that 20% of all Europeans may have spent at least 20 weeks another European country (with a different language than their home country) by 2020

Fraternité 2020 is a partner of the Campus Europae Student Council and the Ride for Your Rights, and since CE shares and identifies itself with its objectives both organizations are keen to cooperate again in the future. In the meantime we invite you to learn more about Fraternité 2020 through their website and sign their statement of support here.

Campus Europe Student Council wins YIA grant

The Campus Europae Student Council has successfully submitted a bid for a Youth in Action grant in order to organize a follow up meeting to the Ride for Your Rights initiative. The meeting will take place place in Luxembourg and Brussels from 12th to 16th October 2011 and bring together the Campus Europae Student Council and more young people coming from 15 different partners (as ESN International, ESN Italy, KISA, etc.)

The participants will share experiences and address key issues such as European Mobility, Citizenship and Volunteering, notably through non-formal activities. The project is being coordinated by Silvia Crocitta from the University of Alcalá and Julia Höltge from the University of Greifswald.

Upcoming events

Ride for Your Rights closing cerimony

St Petersburg, 15th of September

Biology and Biochemistry workgroups meeting (Natural Sciences)

Novi Sad, 10th of October

Seminar "Participation and Higher Education"

European Parliament, Brussels, 18th of October

Humanities and Social Sciences Subject Committee meeting

Lithuania, 27-28 of October

Engineering Subject Committee meeting

Alcalá, 4-5 of November

Business and Administration Subject Committee meeting

tbc, 11th of November

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