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

This mobility project was aimed at providing mobiltiy opportunities to undergraduate students in order to to provide a wider learning context to our small Marine Science programme. Our primary aim (but not sole aim) for student study mobility this academic year was to provide mobility to the arctic region in northern Norway. This enables students to take advantage of a unique opportunity to study in the arctic at an international HIE School specailising in arctic studies, and to change their degree title to reflect both Marine Science and Arctic Studies. We believe this gives our students an excellent opportunity for social and cultural exchange as well as giving them a great opportunity to work and study in the arctic following completion of their degree. Six students undertook mobility opportunities to the arctic, some students for one semester and some for a whole year. The students were highly successful with all students completing their mobility period, some with excellent results. Students have a chance to study across a range of topics that they choose to best fit their interests and strengths.The students were all 3rd year undergraduate students in a 4 year degree. Our returning arctic students have shown to be academically driven and most go directly to PhD study or masters courses in both the UK and beyond (Canada, Norway, Alaska). Previous students that have undertaken this exchange have expressed European-wide and international aspirations for employment and future learning. I expect this year to be very similar as they have returned very focussed and are now undertaking 'polar' themed dissertations. The recieving institute (University Centre Svalbard, UNIS) provides excellent facilities and experiential learning for our students and very much fits with our ethos of learning within the environment. UNIS attracts around 300 students every year - half of which come from across the world, half are Norwegian, so it is an excellent opportunity for students to make friends with a wide range of nationalities and backgrounds.UNIS are always extremely complimentary about our students and always welcome exchange applications from SAMS This year we were not successful in encouraging students to take up internship/work placement mobility, which was disappointing after 2 very successful mobilities in academic year 2013-2014. We will do more this year to encourage activity in this area as we feel there are significant benefits for maturity and employability of students. This year we also did not manage to use our staff mobility allocation. This was largely as a result of staff exchanges across europe finding alternative funding. We have a few members of staff that teach in Norway (UNIS) but the host partners provide funding to cover this activity. Again I would like to encourage more staff exchange and this year have signed new Inter-Institutional Agreements to facilitate more staff exchange an potentially wider students exchange. Many of our research staff have wide reaching research networks and it would be good to extend this to teaching networks.
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