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Higher education student and staff mobility project
Start date: Jun 1, 2014, End date: Sep 30, 2015 PROJECT  FINISHED 

The Erasmus+ mobility is an essential feature of the University of Trento’s international strategy, representing a strategic priority of the University in the last 15 years. The University of Trento counts almost thirty years of experience for what concerns student mobility for studies. The staff mobility for teaching was introduced soon after, thus contributing to the strengthening of the relations with UniTrento partner Universities in the field of research and study. The University of Trento joined the Leonardo da Vinci Programme since its launch, thus gaining precious skills and competences that proved to be very useful when, in the framework of LLP, Erasmus started supporting traineeship experiences and, within Erasmus+, postgraduate traineeships too. In the academic year 2007/2008 the University launched the staff mobility for training, thus offering experiences of mobility also to the technical and administrative staff of the University. In the same academic year, the University implemented the first incoming mobility experience for a professional from enterprise. In moving from LLP to Erasmus+ programme, UniTrento has engaged in an in-depth reflection on the work carried out so far and, thanks to the request of the new ECHE, on the implementation of the programme too. The University’s overall aim is to increase the experiences of outbound and incoming mobility (SMS, SMP, STA, STT) both in terms of quantity and quality. In accordance with the will to offer experiences of mobility for traineeship and studies to a greater number of students, UniTrento has decided to devote specific financial resources to the co-financing of the EU mobility grants, both in terms of number of months and integration. Compared to the last year of LLP, UniTrento registered a 20% increase of the outgoing student mobility for studies: the overall number raised from 353 in the a.y. 2013/2014 to 423 in the a.y. 2014/2015. Out of the 423 participants, just one is a PhD candidate; this figure, in line with the past, can be explained by the fact that the Doctorate schools already promote many other international mobility opportunities. The experiences of student mobility for traineeship significantly increased too: from 39 participants (including 3 PhD candidates) in 2013/2014 to 54 participants in 2014/2015 with an increase of 30% (including mobility experiences offered within Consortia too). The opening of the programme to postgraduate traineeships was very welcome by our students, as shown by the equal number of postgraduate traineeships and university traineeships. For what concern traineeships, in order to increase students’ opportunities, for the last 5 years UniTrento has managed the mobility both individually and in collaboration with two other Universities consortia led by Ca’ Foscari University (consortium I-REEF) and IUAV University (consortium REACT). In addition to the EU and the University’s sources of funding, the Italian Ministry of Education, University and Research too contributes to the financial support to the mobility for traineeships with the “ex lege 183-87”; as per the academic year 2014/2015, this ministerial contribution was mainly used to support the mobility of PhD candidates. Two aspects have contributed to the general increase in the number of mobility experiences registered by our University: the new Programme rule enabling students to study or train abroad more than once as Erasmus students and the amount of the student grant depending on the cost of living of the destination country. With regard to the outgoing staff mobility for teaching and training, UniTrento registered around 10 mobility experiences both for teaching and training, in line with the figures recorded in the framework of LLP. Moreover, UniTrento implemented two staff monitoring visits to Partner Universities, financially covered by the funds allocated to the organization of the mobility activities. If, on the one hand, the University of Trento strongly supports the outgoing mobility, on the other it pays great attention to the incoming mobility too. For many years now, UniTrento has committed itself to set up the “internationalization at home” strategy by encouraging the incoming mobility of international guests. In the academic year 2014/2015, UniTrento received 142 mobile students for studies, 9 mobile students for traineeship, 12 incoming members of the teaching staff and 5 incoming members of the administrative staff. The incoming and outgoing mobility experiences for staff training are essential for the exchange of best practices among Universities, especially now with the common Mobility Tool+ and the OLS introduced by the European Commission.
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