Visibility in Europe
Over 800 international students are now starting their first academic year. For 300 of them, English is the language of classes. Counting all the year groups, a total of 2000 international students are found at the UL. Over 4000 people from around the world have applied to study: the largest groups of applicants came from Belarus, Ukraine, Nigeria and Uzbekistan.
More and more universities from all around Europe invite the University of Lodz to participate in research on the internationalization of universities – we have become visible in Europe and it is precisely because of the number of students and the #UniversityDiversity project - says Liliana Lato, the Head of IRO.
It is not just full-time degrees that make it, for you should bear in mind Erasmus+ and bilateral agreement exchange, with 652 more incoming students in total. UL has received guest students from 41 countries, and the most numerous groups came from Spain (200 students), Turkey (148), Italy (70), Kazakhstan (45), Portugal (44), Ukraine (33), France (26) and Greece (17).
The IRO keeps in touch with each candidate and student, assisting and supporting them. They still cater for their needs after their arrival in Łódź. This may often mean working late hours, but this is how an international university is built – you should be caring and relationship-conscious from the very beginning, as well as you should have a good and mutually supportive Team.
Students support students
This year, the IRO could not organize an integration event as usual, not even a sports competition or city game for new students. Such activities have long enjoyed great popularity among newcomers, but are not allowed now due to pandemic. Instead, numerous online meetings were organized for full-cycle and exchange students, because international students need a lot of support during their first weeks in Łódź. They have been informed about the most important issues related to the course of studies, and their stay, including everyday life in UL, Łódź and Poland.
The popular Mentor programme is run by the IRO, with the help of Erasmus Student Network. It engages experienced UL students in helping newly arrived international fellow students. Their support is invaluable in the process of exploring the university, the city and the principles of higher education in Poland.
Moreover, once a week, the IRO team conducts online meetings to answer students' questions. They respond to thousands of messages a week – this is how the beginning of the academic year at IRO always looks like. Also within its task range, the IRO has allocated over 1,600 places at the University of Lodz Dormitories for current and newly admitted students from abroad. Good assistance for candidates and new students is the key to popularity of the University of Lodz. The newcomers are soon followed by their colleagues and friends, because the word of mouth works best.
BWZ also runs a Facebook profile (https://www.facebook.com/polishuniversity), where important updates for global students are posted, as well as information about life in Poland and interesting events that take place in Łódź. The profile has over 13,000 followers!
Internationalization means you should go abroad!
An international university is not only a good host institution, but it also encourages its students and staff to go abroad. The National Agency of the Erasmus + Programme has once again awarded the University of Lodz with generous funding for international mobility of students, administrative staff and teachers. In the winter semester, almost 200 students of the University of Lodz will go to spend a part of their studies with partner universities abroad.
We are constantly updating and increasing the mobility offer available to students and employees. Students may now apply to spend a semester abroad also in non-EU locations, such as Bosnia and Herzegovina and Albania. Academic staff may now apply to visit Israel, Kosovo, Mongolia, Montenegro, Russia, Sri Lanka and more – says the deputy head of IRO, Aneta Sorbjan – We are also at the dawning of the Erasmus + programme digitization era, known as Erasmus Without Paper. This will make the mobility of our students easier and allow teaching methods to develop.
After more than 18 months of intensive collaboration between the IRO team and an external company, the final version of the enrolment system has been adopted. It will support administrative processes behind international mobility and enrollment for degree studies. It will be used, among others, during the recruitment of candidates for full-time studies at the UL and to qualify UL employees for teaching and training mobility under the Erasmus + Programme, starting from autumn 2021.
We step out to the world
The external fundings help to develop IRO staff, but not only them. The Office reaches out to the whole community of the University of Lodz. Nearly 800 employees have participated in BUILD UP training courses, because internationalization "at home" is just as important as activities carried out "outside". These workshops are designed to provide employees working in the field of internationalization with new competences like techniques of analytical thinking, stress management, event organization or diplomatic protocol. At the end of the day, talking to a Chinese person is different from talking to an Azerbaijani person, and the nuances are sometimes very important.
IRO also tries to stay in touch with the alumni from abroad, especially due to the fact that some of them remain in Poland. Hence, this was precisely the aim of the Linked to UL project. Graduates took part in a photo session with their supervisors of the MA thesis at UL. IRO paved the way for contacts with foreign graduates!
Linked to UL – please read about the project
We also support educational projects. In 2020, UL units implemented 42 projects of this type, of which they coordinated 7. One of them - AIMED has been coordinated by IRO since 2018. In cooperation with 6 European universities as well as the Erasmus Student Network together with the European University Foundation and the IT Centre of UL, a special platform was created to enable access to the mobility opportunities. There is also a focus on ecology by implementing, together with the Faculty of Economics and Sociology, the Erasmus Goes Green project, which develops solutions to reduce the carbon footprint generated by student and staff travels.
New challenges
For three years, the International Relations Office has been supporting UL Authorities in their efforts to join the European Universities Consortium, which principles are to supports the internationalization of education and increase the mobility of students and staff. The University of Lodz is fully prepared to become a member of such a consortium.
Further challenges for IRO and the whole UL include: large marketing campaign within the BUILD UP 2.0 project, further training for the UL community, new project applications within the Welcome to Poland programme and intensive work on the UL internationalization strategy. The team is preparing for the next call for proposals within the Erasmus+ programme, which will be announced soon by the European Commission. It is also getting ready for an intensive work involving assistance to the academic staff in preparing the project applications. We are planning, among other things, to organize a congress for employees of other international cooperation departments of Polish universities and an international staff week, to which employees of partner universities will be invited. It is important for us that good and effective solutions are not limited only to the one university, but based on the exchange of experience and knowledge, they could build a coherent image of professional service we provide.
The number of tasks, as seen, is not decreasing, but anyone who knows this team knows that the internationalization at the UL will only get better. Just look at them when their building is surrounded by incoming students...
Source: IRO UL
Edit: Promotion Centre, UL