Inspiration in focus for study trip to Cologne
This autumn, the Faculty Office at the Faculty of Arts and Humanities (FKH) replaced its usual lunch-to-lunch conference focusing on its own development work with a study trip filled with inspiration and social interaction to the University of Cologne in Germany.
“We usually combine knowledge gathering with inspiration and social interaction at our lunch-to-lunch conferences. And we've certainly done that on this trip", says Ulrika Bengtsson Verde, administrative director at the Faculty of Arts and Humanities.
“We hold the climate issue very high at our faculty, and therefore try not to fly”, she continues. “We chose to travel to the University of Cologne because it is the closest EUniWell partner university to us, and we felt we could travel to it by train.”
The idea was that the whole office would participate, but for various reasons it did not happen. In the end, 21 people travelled, i.e. about 2/3 of the office. The trip was supported by funds from the Erasmus programme.
“We got great help from Leonie Tillmanns, mobility manager at the University of Cologne. She put together an ambitious programme for us where we met with the management of the Faculty of Humanities, and had matchmaking with people with the same or similar jobs.”
We in Sweden have come much further in digitalisation than I thought. Perhaps you could say that we are a bit spoiled.
Day 1 in Cologne they met the Faculty of Humanities, and speed-read collaborators from Cologne. On Day 2, they met in smaller groups around different topics and functions.
So what was most rewarding about the trip?
“The speed dating was the best”, says study counsellor Marie Waller. “It gave us the opportunity to meet many different people working on different things. It turned out, for example, that they didn't have a study counsellor, but it was divided between several different functions. That was interesting to hear. And they were also very curious about us, and what we were working on.”
I think it was an extremely instructive and inspiring journey that opened up a range of perspectives and thoughts.
“It was also interesting to discover how good we are at certain things, such as student perspectives and broader participation. They weren't working on that at all," says education administrator Stina Hultberg, and continues:
“A couple of things I found particularly interesting. For example, it is compulsory in their language teacher training for students to stay in the country whose language they are studying. They also have a preparatory and qualifying semester for all international students from outside the EU, which was a lot about languages, but also about study methodology and German culture. It was very interesting to hear.”
So you took the train to Cologne. How was it?
“Trains are very socializing, and you have time to talk to each other a lot”, says Ulrika. “We got a lot of positive comments about that in our evaluation. But there are some challenges when you travel with such a large group. Sometimes it was hard, but everyone was very brave!”
I think it was an amazing trip in many ways and one thing that affected me a lot was the social contact with everyone.
“We finally decided to travel by day train, and we got good help from Centralens Resebutik in Kalmar to book our trips. In the end, it was a train journey with two changes, in Copenhagen and Hamburg.”
Dare I ask how long the journey took?
“It took about 15 hours. One way.”
It was still quite a big group that didn't follow. How did you handle that?
“They did the same group work that we (tried to) do on the train. Then they had fun at home as well, for example they went on a study visit to the police academy and got a lot of good ideas from there.”
What happens now? How are you building on the experience of your visit to the University of Cologne?
“One concrete result that we are already working on is to bring in a student employee at the office”, says Ulrika Bengtsson Verde. “We are working on that now. We also welcome visits from other universities!”
This applies to exchanges of experience and skills development with the Erasmus programme at Linnaeus University
Linnaeus University's internationalisation work aims to strengthen both students' and employees' ability to understand and actively work in a global knowledge environment. Exchange of experience with colleagues in other countries provides an opportunity to develop and strengthen the University's skills and thus also its operations. Applications to the Erasmus programme are made on a rolling basis.
The Erasmus programme enables all staff, from operational support staff to teaching staff and doctoral students, to apply for a scholarship for staff training in their field of work. The scholarship provides support for additional costs such as travel and subsistence.
Read more about the Erasmus programme on the Linnaeus University intranet.