Rektors blogg:

Internationalization has become a buzzword in the realm of higher education. This comes as no surprise, given the need to bring an international and intercultural dimension to teaching and research. Our strategy plan - Strategy 2020 – sets clear goals: “Internationalisation of study programmes will be enhanced through increased cooperation with strategic partners and through securing agreements with leading universities. Together with these universities, UiO will establish more and better international programmes, recruit more foreign students and increase the number of international lecturers.”

This week we have hosted a delegation from the University of Minnesota (UMN). Since 2010 we have been engaged in a trilateral cooperation with UMN and The Norwegian University of Life Sciences (NMBU), and now is the time to see how our collaboration could be expanded and strengthened.  The conclusions remain to be fleshed out, but the consensus is that more emphasis should be placed on student exchange. As I see it, the collaboration with UMN holds great promise. Within several research fields there is a complementarity in terms of expertise and methodology, and we have identified a number of extant collaborative links to build upon. The development of a strategic partnership with UMN is very much in line with the goals set out in our strategy plan.  University of California Berkeley emerges as another key strategic partner in USA.

Yesterday we learned that we have been awarded an Erasmus + Joint Master Degree. UiO and Gjøvik University College were the only Norwegian institutions that were successful in this first round. The degree is entitled Education Policies for Global Development (GLOBED) and is hosted by the Department of Education at the Faculty of Educational Sciences. Among the partners in the GLOBED are the Autonomous University of Barcelona and the University of Malta. Startup of GLOBED is next fall and the first students will be arriving for the spring semester 2016.

Our strategy plan calls for increased mobility, as does the report recently issued by our Strategic Advisory Board. Joint degrees give our students opportunities to go abroad as an integrated part of their program. We aim to expand these opportunities, and additional degrees and programs are in the making. The message to our students is loud and clear: Seize the opportunity and spend some time abroad, at one of the several hundred institutions with which UiO is proud to collaborate. UiO’s task is to build the bridges, but these must be used in order to serve their purpose.

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University of Minnesota's blog after the visit