Systemic University Change Towards Internationalisation for Academia (SUCTIA)

Shifting culture is only possible through internationalising all groups of higher education stakeholders, only then can we truly talk about international universities. While many activities exist for internationalising students, and the predecessor project SUCTI concentrated on the administrative staff, SUCTI Academia now aims at empowering the third pillar, the academic staff, by better understanding how institutions can provide them with knowledge and skills that will support their university’s internationalisation process.

Status: Finalised
Period: September 2019–August 2022 

Context

SUCTI Academia (SUCTIA) is built on SUCTI, which was is a three-year initiative (2016-2019) approved for funding under the European Commission’s Erasmus+ – KA2 Strategic Partnerships for higher education focusing on the internationalisation of administrative staff. SUCTI has already shown that systemic change through trainings for administrative staff is a key to the success of the international university and the impact of this change has been measured and assessed.

Investments have been made in the internationalisation of academic staff in an attempt to increase their impact on more international research and publications, more internationalised courses, more international programs. However, in order to perform those international tasks, academics (scholars, researchers, teachers) need to have the right preparation, skills, knowledge and support. The aim of the SUCTIA project is to raise awareness and shift the internal culture of our institutions towards internationalisation, thus creating a systemic change in our institutions and in the European Higher Education.

Content

Intellectual outputs and results:

• O1: European report on systemic university changes towards internationalisation for academic staff in European Higher Education Institutions
• O2: Development and design of the blended training materials for Train the trainers module
• O4: Creation of a network of training experts in internationalising academic staff
• O5: Design and development of the training materials for in-house trainings
• O6: Report on the training significance of the training for skills and competences development

The EAIE contributed to the first output of the project, a report outlining the current state of affairs on existing in-house support and training offerings for academic staff. That report is available on the SUCTIA project website.

Project partners

• Adam Mickiewicz University (project coordinator)
• European Association for International Education
• Universitat Rovira i Virgili
• Global Impact Institute
• UNESCO Chair of Higher Education Management-Universitat Politècnica de Catalunya
• Centre for Higher Education Internationalisation – CHEI, Università Cattolica del Sacro Cuore
• University of Porto
• European Consortium for Accreditation in Higher Education
• SGroup