On the afternoon of January 12, the kick-off of the activities of the Erasmus extra-EU mobility Programme was held online. The event was sponsored by the University of Salento and involved its three prestigious partner institutions, namely University of Vlorë in Albania, the Al-Farabi Kazakh National University of Almaty and the Jinan University. From the Jinan University’s side, Vice Dean Prof. Tao Zhu, Director of International Affairs Office Jun Qi and Assistant Director Mr. Lei Luo from the School of Management presented and spoke at the event. The project foresees, in the next two years, exchanges of more than 30 among professors, administrative staff and students of the universities involved, thanks to a funding obtained in 2019 by the University of Salento within the EU’s Erasmus+ KA107 Programme, which aims at involving non-EU citizens and organisations in mobility and exchange actions.

Vice Dean Prof. Tao Zhu (Right) and Mr. Lei Luo (Left)

At the beginning of this new year, still characterised by the difficulties of the pandemic, the launch event of the mobility activities of the project meant to set the ground for a first, auspicious meeting between all the protagonists of the project. Although the outbreak and the prolongation of the spread of Covid-19 has first interrupted and then postponed the planning of the exchanges, the project teams of all the universities involved have never stopped, having the intention and the perspective of preparing everything necessary for the restart of mobility, also making use of all the experiences, means and methods of interaction learnt during this year. The virtual kick-off is exactly the result of this approach, of these logics and, above all, of the determination of the partnership to inaugurate a new phase of the already consolidated collaborations in student, teaching and administrative staff exchanges grown during these years between partner universities including Jinan University, and  the University of Salento.

Exchange Details from Presentation Slides

The event opened with an introduction to the project and the greetings of the Directors of the three Departments involved of University of Salento. This was followed by the institutional addresses and the reciprocal presentation of the universities involved. In this session, Vice Dean Prof. Tao Zhu made a short speech with presentation about Jinan University and School of Management. The event was continued with the three speeches by the project coordinators of each department and their counterparts, who presented in detail the exchange and mobility activities in progress. Prof. Claudio Petti from Department of Engineering for Innovation, University of Salento and Mr. Lei Luo from International Affairs Office of SoM, Jinan University introduced the cooperation history, mobility objectives and details between the two departments. The event concluded with a space dedicated to questions from students and staff beneficiaries of the mobility grants.

The attentive participation of almost 60 people from 4 countries, including students, lecturers, administration and teaching staff representatives, demonstrates the strong will to stay in touch in these difficult times that do not allow people to stay physically close. The virtual initiative is therefore just one more, still symbolic, step to prepare to start the exchanges, as Prof. Claudio Petti said, on the very first day the current situation will allow.

Virtual Group Photo