Staff Week: Internationalization on the Agenda

[Article] - Published on November 18, 2024 in International Partnerships, CHARM-EU European University

From November 12 to 14, UM hosted partner universities from the Coimbra Network and the European Charm-EU alliance for an“Away Week”focused on internationalization. It was an opportunity to strengthen existing ties and develop new collaborations.

International relations or internationalization? It was with this question that François Pierrot, Vice President for International Relations at UM, chose to welcome participants to Away Week(Staff Week), which took place from November 12 to 14 in Montpellier. He was thus able to outline UM’s international strategy in its entirety, covering both the Global South and the Global West, emphasizing the need to better identify partnerships to develop as well as the importance of intra-European collaborations.

Coming from nine countries (Portugal, Lithuania, Ireland, Italy, Spain, Hungary, Sweden, the United Kingdom, and Norway), the approximately twenty participants in this staff week on the theme of internationalization represented the partner universities of the Coimbra Group, a network of long-established, high-level multidisciplinary European universities, as well as the Charm-EU alliance of European universities.

Exchange of best practices

Over the course of these three days, partner universities and representatives from the University of Montpellier alternated between insightful talks and presentations on practical approaches to internationalization, such as international mobility, welcoming international students, and staff involvement in Erasmus+ projects. But also the optimization of the international experience, inclusive education throughOpen Education resourcesas well as innovative teaching tools, and the integration of sustainable development goals into higher education programs…

Several of these topics were discussed using examples from Montpellier, including the reception of international students at UM and the “Bienvenue en France” label, the hybrid mobility programs piloted as part of the joint master’s program led by Charm-EU, or the IDIL teaching program focused on interdisciplinary research and built on the pillars of excellence: nourish, care, and protect.

A series of high-level meetings, promising fruitful collaborations, were also held with the Faculty of Sciences, the Faculty of Law and Political Science, MOMA, the MS University Institute of Technology (IUT), Polytech, the Faculty of Education, the Béziers University Institute of Technology (IUT), the Nîmes University Institute of Technology (IUT), and others… This can only serve as an asset in developing and strengthening UM’s international partnerships within a forward-looking European higher education landscape.