Blog 12 July 2024

SUCTI project – Train the trainers

SUCTI aims at empowering administrative staff by providing them with knowledge and skills related to their university’s internationalisation process.

Gudrun Larusdottir

SUCTI project

The Systemic University Change Towards Internationalisation (SUCTI) project is a three-year initiative approved for funding under the European Commission’s Erasmus+ – KA2 Strategic Partnerships for higher education. The project is coordinated by the URV, Universitat Rovira i Virgili (Tarragona, Spain).

SUCTI aims at empowering administrative staff by providing them with knowledge and skills related to their university’s internationalisation process. Administrative staff represent the backbone of universities, and if they are convinced of the importance and added value of internationalisation they can become genuine change agents.

In this way, they can make a key contribution to the overall objective of the project which is to transform the internal mindset of universities and enable them to become truly internationalised institutions.

The seed for the SUCTI project was first planted in 2011 at the Universitat Rovira i Virgili (Tarragona, Spain), when the idea of creating an internationalisation course targeting administrative staff first came about. The project started officially by a kickoff meeting in Tarragona in January 2017.

“Train the Trainers” workshop in Tarragona, May 2024

The “Train the Trainers” course is an intensive full-week training course which aims to transform administrative staff into SUCTI trainers so that they can deliver the SUCTI training in their own institutions, in their own language, to their peer administrative staff members.

This training course focuses on three different types of content:

Information on internationalization
Intercultural communication skills
Training skills

Last course was hosted at the Universitat Rovira i Virgili, Tarragona, Spain in last May. A group of 22 participants, from all over the world, arrived early Monday morning at the University. The coming week was packed with lectures, exercises, discussions and group work. Intercultural communication and Internationalization were discussed from different perspectives and all participants were encouraged to participate and express their opinion. Learning from each other was a very important part of the course, and listening to different stories and perspectives from others.

We had different professors giving lectures and training throughout the week. Main professors where: Marina Casals Sala who is the coordinator of the SUCTI Project and director of ISEP and Marina Vives Cabré international affairs and internationalization at the Universitat Rovira i Virgili.

There where two participants from the University of Iceland (UI), Guðrún Lárusdóttir from the central HR office and Marta Goðadóttir from the marketing department at the School of Education. Both work across departments and schools at the UI with multiple coworkers on different projects. About 400.000 inhabitants live in Iceland today where one-fifth of them has foreign origins. The combination of students as well as employees at the UI is therefore getting more and more internationalized. It is important for the UI to have access to good study materials to ensure quality teaching when it comes to internationalization and intercultural studies, the SUCTI project will be a great asset.

At the end of the course, participants had developed their own prototype for a course, based on the SUCTI lessons and influence from other participants. A course that each participant will be able to run at their own home Universities later this year.

All good things come to an end; this week was however just the beginning of a new era for the group that met in Tarragona. That Friday we had a happy group of university employees. An excellent group of new friends, saying goodbye to each other, just before they all flew back home - now as a certified SUCTI trainers!