Looking Back at the International Week Organized by DREDI & INVEST
From March 31 to April 4, 2025, the University of Reims Champagne-Ardenne hosted 14 participants from other universities as part of a staff week: a week of conferences, workshops, meetings, and exchanges of good practices.
Internationalization at the Core of the Discussions
The theme of this staff week was “INVESTed in International Students Support: A pledge of quality for the attractiveness of our institutions.” A title that highlighted both the international dimension of the week and served as a nod to the INVEST alliance, which was an integral part of the program.
This staff week is part of a longer-term project developed with the University of Milan-Bicocca (UNIMIB) in Italy and Karelia University of Applied Sciences (Karelia UAS) in Finland, both also members of the INVEST alliance. This joint project represents a new type of staff week: a program spread out over several months with an initial on-site week, followed by two webinars, and a second on-site week. URCA had the honor of launching the program by welcoming the first 14 participants of 8 different nationalities, coming from:
- University of Milan-Bicocca (Italy)
- Karelia University of Applied Sciences (Finland)
- Slovak University of Agriculture (Slovakia)
- University of Thessaly (Greece)
- University of Agrobusiness and Rural Development (Bulgaria)
- University of Málaga (Spain)
- Bucharest University of Economic Studies (Romania)
- SMK University of Applied Social Sciences (Lithuania)
Throughout the week, several URCA staff members also took part in some of the sessions related to their professions, allowing them to exchange on the challenges they face, the solutions implemented, and to learn about the practices of their peers in other universities.
This staff week therefore had a double dimension for URCA: strengthening its internationalization strategy by welcoming universities from abroad, and allowing its teams to share and exchange best practices in internationalization.
A Program Showcasing the University’s Ecosystem
After an informal icebreaker on Monday, March 31, the official launch of the week took place on Tuesday, April 1, with opening remarks from Christophe Clément, President of URCA, followed by Essaid Ait Barka, Vice-President for the INVEST alliance, and Christine Bouteiller, Vice-President for International Relations.
The program was designed so that each stakeholder could contribute their expertise and explain how internationalization is embedded in their professional activities. Participants were able to discover the system supporting academic staff in implementing courses in English and raising awareness of internationalization issues, through the Language Center as well as training linked to the Bienvenue en France initiative. Two students also shared their experiences, one from the Erasmus Student Network and the other from the Bienvenue en France mentoring program.
Local stakeholders were also invited to give their perspective and help participants better understand the dynamic between a university, its territory, and internationalization. Dimitri Oudin, Deputy Mayor of Reims in charge of international relations, explained how the city’s and URCA’s internationalization strategies are interlinked. Meanwhile, Susanna Spreafico, Project Officer for International Mobility and Peer-to-Peer Support at CRIJ Grand Est, presented the European Student Ambassador network and the Time to Move forum, showcasing how effective information sharing can be when all these actors collaborate.
As the project was developed with UNIMIB and Karelia UAS, both universities also led sessions to share their expertise. UNIMIB participants presented their student ambassador program “Bicocca University Angels” and explained how their student community is involved in their internationalization process. Karelia UAS representatives ran a workshop on “How to popularize internationalization goals and involve the university community.”
Finally, participants also had the opportunity to represent their countries and highlight their universities during the 15th edition of Cultures en Fête on Thursday, April 3.
Although this staff week concluded on April 4, each participant—from both other universities and URCA—left with new insights and even greater motivation to put in place the right actions towards internationalization.
DREDI warmly thanks once again all those who contributed to this staff week.
