From February 19th – 21st 2019, the Georg-August-Universität Göttingen hosted two workshops in framework of the Erasmus+ TIGRIS Project.
After the Kick-Off Meeting in November 2017, it was already the second time the Georg-August-Universität Göttingen had the chance to welcome delegations from Kurdish and fellow European partners in Göttingen, this time gathering close to 50 representatives from Kurdish and European partner institutions at the university’s “Historical Observatory”.
In a joint ceremony, the events were kicked-off by Prof. Dr. Hiltraud Casper-Hehne, Vice-President for International Affairs, and Dr. Uwe Muuss, Head of Göttingen International and Coordinator of the TIGRIS Project, both warmly welcoming the partners to Göttingen.
This time, two workshops were held in parallel: The first workshop focused on the development of internationalisation strategies, international mobility and research cooperation and comprised training sessions from Dr. Uwe Brandenburg (Global Impact Institute, Prague), Regine van Groningen (University of Groningen, Netherlands) and Roger Janssens (KU Leuven, Belgium).
Dr. Uwe Brandenburg started the working sessions with his input on the latest European trends in internationalisation in relation to strategy building, thereby defining key areas for Kurdish partners to focus on when designing their internationalisation strategies. Following sections introduced Kurdish partners to critical success factors and risks in strategy design while also providing for individual consultation with each Kurdish parnter HEI in order to define the next steps in strategy development.
Being an integral part of every internationalisation strategy, Regine van Groningen addressed the important topic of international mobility providing insights into the implementation of mobility at the University of Groningen and working with the Kurdish partners on a strategic approach to mobility for Kurdish HEIs.
In his workshop session, Roger Janssens from KU Leuven presented on existing practices on the institutional and governmental level in Flanders to facilitate research cooperation and with Kurdish partners analysed critical (risk) factors for developing research cooperation with international partners.
A dedicated team of experts from the University of Göttingen led by Dr. Tanja Reiffenrath conducted the second workshop focussing on curricular reforms for internationalisation and the international classroom thereby offering comprehensive insights into the internationalisation of curricula while also introducing Kurdish partners to future concepts such as virtual mobility.
As a direct result, Dr. Mohammed Hussein Ahmed, General Director and Head of the Apparatus of Supervision and Quality Assurancefrom at the KRG Ministry of Higher Education and Scientific Research, announced a follow-up workshop to be held in Kurdistan Region for further dissemination and exploitation of the workshop held at Georg-August-Universität Göttingen.
The events also provided TIGRIS partner Charmo University with the opportunity to present on the development work done to implement ECTS and the Bologna system in Kurdistan Region of Iraq proving the great strides Kurdish partners make in reforming Kurdish higher education and aligning it with standards present in the EHEA.
The workshops closed with a joint Project Management Meeting held by Göttingen’s Dr. Uwe Muuss and Jakob Hedderich, in which a timeline for the second project year was developed and adopted.