The University of Gothenburg received funding for more exchange projects than any other university or institute of higher education in Sweden in the latest round of applications from the Linneaus-Palme international exchange program, administered by the Swedish Council for Higher Education. The Sahlgrenska Academy is involved in half the projects from the University of Gothenburg that were granted funding.
Linnaeus-Palme is an international exchange program, established to stimulate cooperation between universities and institutes of higher education in Sweden and developing countries. The aim of the program is to increase involvement in internationalization at Swedish institutes of higher education.
A genuine interest in internationalization
In the recently completed round of applications, the University of Gothenburg received funding for twenty-one project applications. The main applicant in twelve of them was the Sahlgrenska Academy. The total funding granted to the University of Gothenburg for the Linnaeus-Palme program was SEK 3,500,000, of which over SEK 1,300,000 was for applications submitted by the Sahlgrenska Academy. These projects were for exchanges with Uzbekistan, Tanzania, South Africa, Chile, Nepal, Palestine, Rwanda, Uganda, India and Jordan.
The most successful institute at the Academy was the Institute of Health and Care Sciences, with five applications granted. Bibi Kennergren, the head of internationalization and the individual responsible for four of these project applications, explains it as follows: “There is a genuine interest in internationalization at our institute, on the part of both the staff and the students, and it is also a high priority from the administration.”
Three ongoing exchanges, one new one
The four exchanges for which Bibi Kennergren was granted funding are with universities in India, Jordan, the Palestinian Autonomous Areas and Uganda.
“I’ve applied for funding one year at a time, not least because the situation in some of these countries is unstable, and things sometimes change rapidly. There was an option of applying for two years at a time, but but before the funding for year two is paid out, you have to submit a half-time report. That’s just as time-consuming as submitting a new application,” she explains.
She says she has noted a marked increase in interests on the part of the teachers at the Institute in recent years, which may be because colleagues who have been on an exchange come back and speak enthusiastically about their experiences.
New and renewed contacts
The cooperation with Makerere University in Uganda is completely new, and will be for students studying to become nurses and midwives. The first step will be planning visits, at which two teachers from each university visit each other’s, to structure the exchange programs.
The Institute also has a relatively new exchange with the Hyderabad Karnataka Education Society (HKES), College of Nursing, a satellite of the University of Hyderabad.
“We have completed the planning visits, and have new received funding for a teachers’ exchange, for which we have high hopes. We were previously in contact with a different program, but those plans fell through because that program never appointed a teacher to be our liaison, and in the end we had to drop it,” says Bibi Kennergren.
The exchange program with the University of Jordan, in Amman, has been up and running for several years. It has mainly taken the form of teachers’ exchanges, but we will have a new round of student exchanges in the foreseeable future.
This is the third year of the exchange program with the Palestinian Autonomous Areas, and this year the Institute was also granted funding for student exchanges, to which Bibl Kennergren looks forward: “It means a great deal for our students to become acquainted with other traditions and ways of seeing things, and to gain insight into how people living in areas subjected to conflict relate to their predicament.”
Largest number of exchanges but not most funding
Although the University of Gothenburg received funding for the most exchanges among all the universities and institutes of higher education in Sweden, this does not mean that the University of Gothenburg was granted the most funding. That was Jönköping University. Although Jönköping was granted funding for five fewer projects, they still took home nearly SEK 1,000,000 more than the University of Gothenburg.
“They’re good at strategic thinking, and at exploiting their network, which often extends to the free churches,” according to Bibl Kennergren.
