The value of strong international collaboration
International collaboration is at the heart of what I work with every day. It comes in many shapes and forms through projects, bilateral relations and alliances. For me, the students and their education are my centre of attention. How can we create a positive impact for our students, increase their academic opportunities and contribute to their personal development through international collaboration?
Our European university alliance, 4EU+, is founded on the notion that we can do more – create more opportunities and enhance the quality of our educational offering – by working together than what we can each do separately. With 61 educational projects, 721 shared courses, 3592 student mobilities and 1176 staff mobilities recorded in the first project period, 4EU+ is well under way.
In UCPH Rector Henrik C. Wegener’s leader following the 4EU+ Annual Meeting held in Copenhagen in October, he shares his vision as the new president for building a sustainable alliance, working toward seamless mobility and boosting academic and administrative collaboration. I share his vision and cherish that we have a university leadership that truly believes in the importance of being part of strong international collaborations on education. It opens new opportunities for our students and offers them new personal and academic perspectives.
UCPH enjoys many strong bilateral international relations, and we have joined forces with some of our long-term partners in the Erasmus KA2 Evaluate project (2019-2022) to develop a framework for evaluating international strategic partnerships. Being part of the project was a valuable learning experience that led to reflections on our internal processes and stakeholder engagement at UCPH. We look forward to using the evaluation framework in the future to improve our partnerships to the benefit of our students and researchers, and hope that you will find it useful at your institution too.
Finally, I just want to use this opportunity to share with you the great news of UCPH Professor Morten Meldal winning the Nobel Prize in Chemistry for his ground-breaking work with what is known as click chemistry. Meldal shares the award with Barry Sharpless from Scripps Research and Carolyn Bertozzi from Stanford University. Hence, this proves ‘the value of strong international collaboration’.
On this happy note, I wish all my colleagues at our partner institutions and the many students we have exchanged over the past year a very happy holiday season and all the best for the new year.
By Anne Bruun
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Anne Bruun
Anne Bruun is Director International at UCPH
Photo by Kim Vadsk.