INTERNATIONALIZATION SERVICES
How to Establish Successful Student Mobility with U.S Universities? Invited experts and workshop participants shared best practices and coached each other on practical solutions for student exchange partnerships with U.S. universities and on attracting U.S. students to Finland. Text KAROLIINA KOKKO
The Fulbright Finland Foundation supports the internationalization of Finnish higher education institutions. The Foundation organizes workshops and training seminars that address different themes relevant to the internationalization of Finnish higher education. The latest workshop was organized in March 2018 and it focused on best practices and key factors for building student mobility partnerships with U.S. universities. www.fulbright.fi/en/ internationalizationservices
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ulbright Finland brought together close to 40 Finnish higher education institution (HEI) representatives from 27 different institu-
tions to discuss successful partnership building with U.S. universities. The workshop was organized as a follow-up to the 2016 Fulbright Finland Capacity Building Workshop on Recruiting U.S. Students to Finland.
The workshop helped me to think out of the box and dare to develop new forms of collaboration.
A long-term specialist in the field of international education, Assistant Provost Heidi Gregori-Gahan from the University of Southern Indiana and Regional Educational Advising Coordinator
Attracting U.S. Students a Top Challenge
Peter Baker from the U.S. Department of State
The pre-workshop survey, conducted among the
shared the U.S. institutional perspective on inter-
participants, revealed that the most crucial chal-
national partnership building. Successful Finnish
lenge that Finnish HEI’s face in establishing and
examples on U.S. university mobility cooperation
maintaining partnerships with U.S. universities is
and utilizing the Fulbright program in the insti-
attracting U.S. students to Finland. Identifying a
tutional partnership building were presented
suitable partner university in the U.S. was another
by University Lecturer Hanna Vehmas from the
common challenge for Finnish HEIs as well as the
University of Jyväskylä as well as Senior Lecturer
Finnish and U.S. institutions’ different interests
Marina Wikman from the Satakunta University
in the length of the student exchange periods. The
of Applied Sciences. Current U.S Fulbright fellows
cost and practicalities of the Finnish residence per-
shared their insights in a panel discussion on mar-
mit process was also often pointed out in the survey
keting Finland for U.S. students.
as a hindrance for Finnish–U.S student mobility.