Further steps to cooperation

This week another small delegation from the University of Aruba arrived in Rotterdam. Two lecturers had come to the Netherlands to visit two of their students on a placement here. And seized this opportunity to pick up the collaboration talks where we had left off. For now we have mainly aimed at the opportunities that students can take to benefit from the further steps in the process of establishing a mode of cooperation that is of mutual benefit to both universities.

Taking instantaneous notes of the things we discussed and projecting it onto a screen for all to see, helped us to check every step on the way and jointly write down what we agreed on. Good progress was made and remarkably again, we shared so many views on the agenda items.

Helpful in the talks and in all the steps towards collaboration is the fact that both our universities have a common accreditation organisation, namely NVAO, and that we both work with the ECTS credit system. After clarifying the student (credit) mobility issues the next thing will be to focus on lecturer mobility and the sharing of knowledge and expertise on mutually interesting themes. Identifying common interests and finding common ground are steps that virtually have already been taken in the  two previous meetings, so no difficulties are envisaged in that area. Future collaboration steps look promising.