Erasmus Charter for Higher Education (ECHE) / EPS

ERASMUS POLICY STATEMENT 2021-2027

Poznań University of Life Sciences (PULS) supports the vision of the European Education Area development that spending time abroad for science and education purposes should become the norm as well as that higher education qualifications should be recognized throughout the EU. We recognize that efforts are to be made to ensure that everyone should have access to high-quality education, regardless of their socioeconomic origin. The Erasmus+ program contributes to increasing the sense of our European identity and European cultural heritage along with its diversity.
The Erasmus+ Programme is the most important part of educational internationalization at the bachelors and masters level at PULS. It is also a crucial part of PhD programs and academic research. We particularly care about maintaining contact with agricultural and forestry universities, which are not many in Europe. The Erasmus+ Programme allows for closer cooperation with other universities representing a high scientific level as well as those experienced in practical issues.
Over the years Erasmus+ Programme has helped immensely to enhance mobility of staff and students, as well as allowed our university to participate in numerous European and international cooperation projects, with excellent results. PULS aims to increase  significantly  number of  students and academic  staff exchange  and   improve  our curriculum  in the new  perspectives of Erasmus 2021-2027.
 PULS aspires to be the most international university in life sciences field in Poland. Internationalization and modernization are at the bottom heart of the strategic agenda of our institution. PULS’s mission focuses on giving students top quality education, enabling students and staff to participate in international research projects that aim to optimize use and development of the one of the  best research infrastructures in Europe. We are strongly committed to Lisbon strategy goals - "knowledge triangle" - research, education and innovation which is a core factor in European efforts.

Poznań University of Life Sciences main objectives of the participation in Erasmus+ for 2021-2027 include, however are not limited to:
•    Improving and expanding the range of courses offered in English for incoming Erasmus+ student. We will strengthen international services with better course catalogues, study descriptions and a continued focus on parallel language use. We are working on improving language skills of our staff involved in Erasmus+ by offering free language courses focused on their fields of expertise.
•    Increasing numbers of incoming and outgoing students and number of partnerships across EU
•    Enhancing the quality and visibility of our international activities in the framework of Erasmus+. We want to increase the engagement of our students who came back from their mobility exchange. We will select some of them to be Erasmus+ Ambassadors and we will support them in promoting mobility programs in various ways. We are taking steps to remove internal academic and administrative barriers to such mobility. This will be achieved by, for example, reinforcing students’ relationships with external parties, especially international, when working on their Master’s degree.
•    Modernizing our curriculum in order to reflect its comprehensive sustainable dimension and environmental challenges that are ahead of us that will allow us to share its benefits across all of Europe. We support the whole range of technological activities providing more analytical tools needed to understand the special nature of the climate change and what we, as life sciences university, can do to mitigate its effects.
•    Strengthening the international links between education, research and business to promote excellence and innovation. At PULS operates a Centre for Innovation and Technology Transfer that connects public and private institutions aiming to increase the utilitarian nature of the developed innovative solutions.
•    Creating an effective governance and funding mechanisms in support of excellence, ensuring that funding and investing in quality education matches labour market needs.
•    Offering more assistance to low-income students: more places at free of charge studies, new student loans, need-based grants.

Globally, sector of higher education is rapidly changing with increasingly flexible programs and modes of delivery. This creates opportunities for our university, as learners at all levels demand greater flexibility and education choices. PULS offers all of its degree students and staff members a possibility to acquire international experience. This can be done by either spending a period abroad or by welcoming incoming exchange students, lecturers or researchers. Internationalization at home is enabled for students who do not want to or cannot complete part of their studies abroad. This is an important part of our strategy – to create space for all our students and staff to be exposed to different cultures. It creates an exciting, modern learning environment and enriched atmosphere. We plan to continue inviting visiting lecturers under Erasmus+ to add the international character to our local education. We will continue to build PULS’s awareness of the value of international mobility across our community.

We are working on increasing the level of transparency and compatibility of undergraduate and graduate degrees. We encourage our 1st and 2nd cycle students to spend part of their studies abroad. All PhD candidates are motivated to spend some of their degree period abroad, depending on their personal situation this could be even as short as few weeks. Academic staff mobility is crucial to our development as it supports research connections and contributes towards international sharing of knowledge and expertise. Our aim is to achieve a 50% increase in the number of our students and staff who study abroad by 2027.

The number of incoming international students has been steadily growing over the years and more courses are being offered in English each year. PULS is an ideal host to students participating in Erasmus+ mobility schemes. Poland, and Poznan, being one of more affordable cities in Europe, has enabled to attract students from lower-income areas and developing countries that otherwise would not have been able to take part in the international exchange. We are aiming to further increase those numbers by 50% by 2027.

We are committed to working together with other participating countries and institutions to develop, share and transfer the best practices and innovative approaches in the fields of education, training, research  and youth. Our final target is intended to be:
•    Increased quality of education and training with increased opportunities for all, including those at disadvantage – this will be done by for example offering more assistance to low-income students: more places at free of charge studies, new student loans, need-based grants.
•    Education, training and youth systems that are better aligned to the needs of and opportunities offered by the labour market, and closer links to business and the community. PULS is committed to enhance the link between theory and practice
in teaching and learning and to promote creativity, innovation and entrepreneurship by offering relevant learning opportunities. We aim to strengthen our research activities through contact with business community and other public agencies and sectors. The university aims to ensure the framework and conditions that promote interaction between basic research and need-driven research are based on innovation. We take actions to provide students with knowledge that can be used and brought into play in the labour market.
•    Improved provision and assessment of basic and transversal skills, particularly: entrepreneurship, social, civic, intercultural and language competences, critical thinking, digital skills and media literacy. We are continually improving our curriculum and methods of delivering our courses to focus more on the above mentioned skills.
•    Increased synergies and links and improved transition between the different sectors of education, training and youth at national level, with improved use of European reference tools for recognition, validation and transparency of competences and qualifications. We are strengthening the international links between education, research and business to promote excellence and innovation. At PULS operates a very active Centre for Innovation and Technology Transfer that connects public and private institutions aiming to increase the utilitarian nature of the developed innovative solutions.
•    More strategic and integrated use of ICTs and open educational resources (OER) in education, training and youth systems. We are working on moving forward our formal processes online. We hope to be able to offer some of our courses on online platforms in the next years. We effectively implemented various digital tools to facilitate bureaucracy processes for students. PULS currently offers online: enrolment, language exams for students who want to go abroad and electronic student record books. More documents are accepted in an electronic form.
•    Increased motivation for language learning through innovative teaching methods or better links to practical use of language skills required by the labour market;
•    Reinforced interaction between practice, research and policy.

Our indicators framework that we are developing will allow to monitor the impact of international mobility on our students, staff and university. We are creating a sustainable set of mobility programme performance indicators that is still in early stages of development and validation. The framework will be designed to include quantitative and qualitative indicators that will allow us to evaluate PULS’s mobility programmes and show us how we can improve.

Framework will include but is not limited to:
-    Mobility targets for student and staff mobility – our aim is to achieve a 50% increase in the number of our students and staff who study abroad by 2027
-    Mobility targets for incoming students and staff – our aim is to achieve a 50% increase in the number of incoming students and staff by 2027
-    Quality of the implementation and support for participants on mobility – this will be evaluated using specifically designed surveys
-    Increased involvement in cooperation projects – our aim is to achieve a 30% increase in the number of international research projects by 2024. This will be monitored by comparing numbers of published research articles where one of the authors took part in the mobility programme at PULS (incoming or else) and number or international research project where PULS staff member or student is actively involved.
-    Increased cooperation among organisations and institutions – our aim is to increase number of partnerships in Erasmus+ Programme by 20% by 2025.

PULS’s desire is to have objective measures that demonstrate students’ engagement with Erasmus+, their experience of courses and the quality of those courses from students’ perspective. For the first time at PULS we will have an integrated and coherent set of surveys providing feedback at key junctures of the student experience and beyond, and a centralised and independent approach to survey administrations. At this point we are aiming to have three, point in time, surveys that will allows us to monitor how the mobility programmes offered at PULS are performing:
1)    International Student Survey – aimed at incoming students, measuring the engagement of students with our institution, teaching quality, learner engagement, student support, learning resources, skills development and  overall quality of their educational experience
2)    Graduate Outcomes Survey – aimed at local students who take part in the mobility program, examining graduates’ labour market outcomes and providing a more contextualised understanding of graduate outcomes
3)    Erasmus+ Partnership Satisfaction survey – assessing the partner/employer’s opinion of the students generic skills and work readiness, employer satisfaction, foundation skills, technical skills and domain specific knowledge.