Sumy State University (SumDU)

Project title: International University Campus – Space for Global Outreach

Submitted by: Oksana Kaliuzna, Deputy Head of the Documentation Management and International Protocol Unit, International Affairs Department, Sumy State University (SumDU)

City: Sumy

This project was implemented within the Training Course “Management of Internationalisation and German-Ukrainian Academic Cooperation 2020-2021”, led by the Leibniz University Hannover (LUH), funded by the DAAD (Germany), 2020-2021

Project Goal(s) and SMART Objective(s):

The overall goal of the project is creation of high-quality conditions for internationalization:

  • development of multilingual and multicultural equipment of campuses: campus plans, external signposts, indexes inside buildings, signboards, flags and photo walls, memorable places, plaques; set of welcome instructions and services for international visitors;
  • formation of provided services system (library, dormitories, canteens) to provide international visitors with corresponding cost calculations and information support in different languages).

The expected achieved results of the project are: a set of educational publications (instructions) on the structure and services of the university for foreign visitors, campus plans, external signposts, indexes inside buildings, signboards, flags and photo walls, memorable places, plaques, new multilingual website of the University.

Deliverables: 

  • improvement of work with foreign students at the institutes, faculties, departments and units;
  • increasing the number of incoming and outgoing students and staff;
  • development of more external partnerships for an extended network of global cooperation;
  • increasing participation of staff in international projects;
  • the new multilingual website of the University.

The change in the University organization system has changed the paradigm of the project pattern.

Challenges and Support

What were the main challenges of your project and how did you manage to overcome them?

Not using the full potential of the university and the capacity to increase the volume of internationalization because of the language and mental barriers. Provision of a system of continuous improvement of the language and intercultural competencies of the university employees.
Insufficient level of cross-cultural and global thinking among university stakeholders

 

University engages international staff to stimulate national stakeholders for internationalization at home and fundraising, still requires a solid piece of work.
Insufficient funding due to pandemic University directs most of the internal, and moreover external communication online, so the online university space gets to be innovated and renewed to attract more external stakeholders

Lessons Learnt: What are your lessons learnt and recommendations you would like to share?

  • Enforce cooperation with other university subdivisions
  • Insufficient funding due to pandemic
  • Insufficient level of cross-cultural and global thinking among university stakeholders
  • The change in the University organization system has changed the paradigm of the project pattern

Impact: Please describe how your project contributed to/ advanced the specific aspect of the internationalization at your university.

The project has enhanced intercultural learning outcomes, improvement of the content of the webspace, continuation of the implementation of the campus internationalization policy.

Outlook and Sustainability: What happens to the project after the end of the course (are there any follow-up projects? What are you going to do to ensure the sustainability of the project results?)

Our project is a continuous process, it based on the Strategy of the Internationalization of the university, and it goes in line with it in every stage of implementation.