The Erasmus+ Programme

As an important component in the overall internationalisation strategy, the Erasmus Programme has complemented the efforts to build up cooperation with European educational institutions.

European Policy Statement

Background
All educational programmes of the school have been approved and accredited by the Ministry of Culture; all teaching at the school is research-based. The educational programmes offered by Aarhus School of Architecture have been structured according to the European Bologna ‘model’ (3 +2 +3).

Aarhus School of Architecture has entered into agreements on practical training with 256 companies, 109 of which are located abroad. Each year, approximately 100 students participate in practical training for up to 5 months, and through evaluations submitted by companies the school receives useful knowledge of how companies assess the qualifications of students. The majority of companies who offer internships are private architectural and design companies, the remainder are municipal authorities, organizations and major production companies.

Research at Aarhus School of Architecture involves a range of subject areas: Planning, Landscape Architecture, Architecture, and Design. lt is decisive for Aarhus School of Architecture that the production of knowledge in these areas should contribute to developing the architectural profession. This applies to social issues, to the development of professional practice, as well as to architecture as a discipline.

The European context
The EU LLP Program with its focus on exchange of students, scholar and administrative staff supports the aim and efforts described above. The future efforts will concentrate primarily on the main target groups that we already focus on, which broadly speaking are the following: partnerships, students, scholars and staff.

Partnerships
The LLP framework has developed in to a very efficient and easy-handled exchange system. We would like to praise the continuous concentration by the EU and its Technical Agency to make the system easier and efficient, streamlining the procedures and processes, ending up with a very transparent and easy functioning administrative system.

Aarhus School of Architecture aims at revising our partnership portfolio already by the academic year 2014-2015. The revision will result in fewer but hopefully stronger partnerships, enabling us to increase the mobility with the partners. We aim to secure cooperation with strong academic programmes, and retain a commitment to mutual mobility.

Within practical training, we will continue to develop the links between the European industry and us as an academic, research institution. We will continue to sign LLP contracts with the industry, creating close ties between us and the recipient of our graduates. By using the LLP framework, we strive to increase the employability for our graduates – not only on a local Northern scale, but rather at a truly European level.

Students
The EU Life Long Learning Program will continue to be a cornerstone in our exchange efforts. The inclusion of practical training has for us as a professional school, proved to match the academic exchanges very well. With the exception of 2009, the numbers of students in practical training has remained at a satisfactory level.

The student exchange network will be trimmed to house fewer partners, exchanging an increased number of students to each partner. We will however also aim a lifting the quality of the partner network by substituting members of the partner network so that the network match our academic direction and aspirations.

Scholars
It is our aim that we want an increased number of teachers and scholars included in the LLP efforts. This will be done via the tradition of guest lectures and seminars, but also through the development of new joint workshops or other types of short cycle educational activities.

Staff
The staff exchanges have been our Achilles heel! We welcome very much the possibility of sending our staff on competence developing activities abroad, but at the same time, we must also conclude, that the requirements for participating under the LLP framework do to a certain extent hamper the possibility to engage fully in this aspect of the LLP.

We would, however, like to reaffirm our commitment to this particular LLP aspect.

Countries of interest
Our prime concern is to sign agreement with institutions worldwide that can honor both the academic level and the linguistic challenges that we, as a Scandinavian institution struggle with. In that respect, there is no difference between the European exchanges and the exchanges with the rest of the World.

We will remain open for scholars from our partner network and will continue to welcome representatives from the industry. Especially the possibility of inviting representatives from foreign architecture companies has been an overwhelming success. The new possibilities of co-funding these visits by the LLP has made it possible for us to expand the number of invitees. We aim to continue these efforts.