Arriving on the mild though misty autumnal shores of the Jutland peninsula from all four corners of Europe – Bulgaria to Norway, Latvia to Portugal – and beyond – viz. Turkey and Tunisia – a 40-strong team of experts from 38 universities in 28 countries gathered under the auspices of Karen M. Lauridsen at Aarhus University in eager anticipation of the IntlUni launch meeting.

2012.12.17 | Peter Stear

Our accommodation – a stone’s throw from the Danish royals' summer residence and blessed with splendid sea views as well as a sauna – was to be the Helnan Marselis Hotel.  As everyone quickly concurred, a felicitous choice on the part of Karen and her project manager, Mette Kastberg Lillemose, within easy shuttling distance of the meetings on the university campus while allowing our hosts to indulge us en route with an impromptu guided tour through their delightful hometown.

With the Evaluation Board, Management Committee and Work Package Leaders having already convened on Tuesday evening and the following morning, Wednesday afternoon was devoted to three state-of-the-art lectures by Robert Wilkinson (Maastricht), John Airey (Linnaeus) and Maria Kuuteva (Stockholm). View abstracts and presentations here. It was clear from the Dutch and Swedish HE experiences outlined here – respectively from an administration, teaching and research perspective – that English Medium Instruction has become a driving force of internationalization, but that if it is to be English Premium Instruction, it requires careful planning with a view to sustainability.  Of great interest here was the fact that EMI also comes at a premium and has even led to the enshrining in law of parallel language use in Nordic countries to shore up local languages.

Day two, Thursday, saw the official launch, with words of welcome from Karen and Peder Østergaard, Vice-Dean for Education at the School of Business and Social Sciences in Aarhus. After a recap of the background and rationale of the project – with special thanks to Wolfgang Mackiewicz and the European Language Council – there were two workshops on HEI scenarios Europe-wide and the concomitant linguistic, cultural and pedagogical challenges.

The workshops revealed that a one-size-fits-all solution for Europe’s HEIs was never going to be a viable approach, with participants outlining a diverse range of scenarios and complex challenges arising from the emergent multi-lingual, multi-cultural learning space. These included a perceived North/South divide in Europe with a view to funding, an increased need for sensitivity toward diverse national academic traditions and the vexed issue of the disciplinary divide between the humanities/social sciences and the life/hard sciences, in particular STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics) subjects. As well as HEIs having to operate in increasingly porous polities, one issue also touched upon, and here we were privileged to have Houda Dhaoui Bouslama from the recently created Virtual University in Tunis, was the impact of Massive Open Online Courses and whether their global reach might lead one to assume that ‘MOOCs shall inherit the earth’ as some commentators have been quick to argue.

All in all, a rich and productive discussion, which our research experts – Sharon Millar (Southern Denmark), Helmer Strik (Radboud Nijmegen), Kirsi Westerholm (Jyväskyla) and Alessia Cogo (Southampton) – summarized for us in two sessions. These workshop outcomes will form the basis for the questionnaire to be piloted in mid-December and completed by focus groups at participating HEIs in mid-January. Then, as day two drew to a close, we all assembled for a dinner of fine wines and the delights of modern Danish cuisine at the Thors Mølle restaurant, there to continue our discussions in a more relaxed and informal setting.

On the final Friday morning Karen set out the schedule for the next few months and inducted us  – at least those of us less well versed in budget procedures for EU network projects – into the arcane but vital intricacies of time and travel expense sheets.  After lunch, and while most of us headed off into the cold but bright and breezy Baltic air of a now wintry Aarhus, pondering the insights gleaned and the complexity of the tasks ahead, the Evaluation Board – chaired by Krista Varantola and comprising Arthur Mettinger, Mari Simola, Régis Ritz and, nomen est omen, Bernd Wächter – re-convened for their closing session. Warsaw, the next partner meeting venue, will thanks to Karen and Mette’s superb hospitality and organizational flair in Aarhus have its work cut out. 

2012.12.14 | Peter Stear | Freie Universität Berlin |