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

During its centuries-long existence, the Sárospatak Reformed Theological Academy (further: SRTA) has continuously maintained relationships with European institutes of Theology. Its academic life has played a role in the development of European Protestant Theology? students having studied abroad pursued teaching activities on their return. Consequently the KA1 project, Learning Mobility of Individuals, is an organic continuation of those traditions. The former academic points of contact, their nature and quality define our present partnerships. As formerly, this year we have considered important all three kinds of mobility, that of students, teaching and administrative staff. With regard to the mobilities it is important to state that SRTA is a small institution, during the past mobility period the number of full time students was less than 80 (out of the total number of less than 300), and the number of its full time teachers was less than 25. Thus all numbers and percentages should be interpreted and evaluated in the light of those facts. In general it can be stated that SRTA has not only met the quantitative objectives, but has exceeded them. a) In student mobility we have aimed at middle-term periods ? 7 of our students spent one semester at one of our new partners, in Romania. We received one student from the same institution. We put great emphasis on the principle that mobility achievements were fully recognized and the credits attained counted towards the degree. We saw to it that the courses offered at SRTA provided this condition to our incoming student as well. The aim of student mobility, besides widening the academic view of our students, was to provide the possibility of active encounters with other cultures, and help develop the students? personal competencies with special regards to learning methodologies and analytical skill . Since our outgoing students had to pursue their studies in their mother tongue (Hungarian) at the host institution, no online linguistic support licenses were used. With the active contribution of our student body we provided assistance in administration, orientation, adaptation for our only incoming student. The Erasmus coordinator was available to our outgoing students during mobility. Altogether SRTA provided constant and organized support for those participating in student mobility. b) Teaching mobility was reciprocal in terms of our bilateral agreements: we sent out and accepted teachers. The number of outgoing mobilities for teaching was 7 to 3 institutions (Germany, Romania and the Netherlands). We received eleven teachers (from Germany and Romania). We have very intensive teaching mobilities with an institution in Romania. Our teachers gave short and intensive series of lectures at the host institution, in most cases they conformed to the relevant themes of the curricula. Two of our teachers were asked to offer a complete common course that fit the curriculum and credit system of the partner institution. The mobility of our teachers served the sharing of values born at our institution, and offered opportunities for gathering, systematizing and making use of experiences of teaching among students of different cultures. Incoming teachers were able to enrich our students with new insights, questions and methods, and were able to enrich those colleagues not taking part directly in mobility by means of the delivered open lectures and personal consultations. One of the lectures delivered by our incoming teacher from Germany is just ready to be published in our academic journal in order to transfer knowledge in a wider circle. c) The basic aim of staff training mobility was related to the institutional development principles. Besides the customary practices we find it important for our staff (both administrative and teaching) to get to know good practices in institutional governance, to acquire foreign language competences for the sake of maintaining and deepening our relationships, and to participate in trainings and workshops. This year one of our junior academic staff members attended a two week intensive Spanish language course in Spain in order to meet the foreign language requirements of her doctoral studies. She has passed her state language exam since then. We have extended one of our former non-Erasmus partnerships in Poland into and Erasmus+ cooperation, and as a first result two academic staff members spent a week at our institution in order to exchange experiences and transfer working methods in the area of higher educational administration. From a Romanian partner institution an administrative staff member spent a week at our institution to exchange experiences on data analysis methodologies, and to learn about the public funding of higher education in Hungary. d) Negotiations have been started with one of our partner institutions in the Netherlands about a summer school in 2016 with the participation of staff and students from both institutions.

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