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

The University of Las Palmas of Gran Canaria, herinafter ULPGC, has a wide experience in the management of the Erasmus programme since its establishment in Spain. In its initial stages, it did not have enough human and technological resources, but as the number of motilities grew, the situation changed. A vicerectorate of International affairs and an International Affairs office were created, each faculty has a responsible of international affairs to deal with academic matters and after, specific offices around the campuses were built as an office called International Mobility Point (IMP). At the beginning, the number of exchange students were around ten, and we can nowadays count with 680. The ULPGC has approximately 25.000 students enrolled. The ULPGC has aproximately 300 partner universities which gives the opportunity to a wide range of students to participate in. Moreover, the majority of ULPGC partners have been collaborating since the Socrates Programme so the communication is very fluent and the problems get a fast solution. New partners are also welcomed. Faculty coordinators supervise the election and if they agree, the compromise is set up within an institutional agreement. All for the benefit of the beneficiary. The activity that has more participants is student mobility for studies (SMS). Within the last years, the ULPGC received 1.000 applications. Staff mobility has fewer participants and although the number through the years do not have a significant increase, each year we received applications from new staff. Also, the ULPGC, tries to help the beneficiary with the long procedure that involve taking part in the programme. For this reason, all participants have access to an informatic tool from the beginning of their application until the end of their stay and may even upload all the necessary documents, avoiding physical movements and paperwork. In this academic year, for the first time for the ULPGC and the Canarian region, the student’s grants had an important increase. This include an amount for individual support of at least 650€ and for travel costs depending on travel distances. These quantities are higher than the ones awarded for the rest of Spanish students. The reason is that students from outermost Programme Countries and regions are considered for the constrains imposed by the remoteness from other Programme Countries. This situation was widely accepted among students, but once they knew the limited number of grants, we received many withdrawals. Approximately 220 students didn´t get a grant. After the intermediate report sent to the SEPIE, we got more grants and we finally could grant all participants with the exception of the Erasmus.es grantees because of the incompatibility. All the project phases had gone as normal. The beneficiary received all the information following the scheme: before, during and after mobility. They also received all the necessary information about the documents they had to fill in and we had the relevant follow up. There are different services that intervene in the mobility process. On the one hand, the International Office (IRO) with the Vicerectorate of International Affairs is in charge of the disseminateion of the programme and to provide all the necessary information about application, requirements, documents, grants… In each faculty, there is an international coordinator and in each campus, there is a technic international office. They are in charge of the academic issues. Lastly, we had a service called International Mobility Point (IMP) which gives support to incoming and outgoing students mobility about accommodation, medical insurances, transport and visas. The impact affects to a local, regional, national and international level. Our location, the southern part of Europe, and our remoteness from the continent, complicates our motilities opportunities. Without this programme, probably, the possibility of living the European experience would lead in an utopia or only a minority could leave it. At an institutional level, the ULPGC, in its last published strategic plan, include a couple of paragraphs about strengthening internationalization. Erasmus+ has a large acceptance among our University community, and the word of mouth is, most of the time, the most efficient way to disseminate the programme. Apart from the meetings that are done in the faculties, each academic year, we convene a contest called ULPGC around the world, for the ex-erasmus, we made a spot to disseminate among our partners and we had the mentor programme.
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