Within the cooperation agreement of 2017 between the UFRO Faculty of Law and Business and the Baden-Wuerttemberg Cooperative State University (DHBW) the dean, Valeska Geldres Weiss, participated in their “International Partnership Week”.

The dean of the Faculty of Law and Business at the Universidad de La Frontera, Dr. Valeska Geldres Weiss, recently participated in a meeting with deans, rectors and directors of different higher education institutions from all over the world.

They met at the “International Partnership Week” at DHBW Ravensburg in Germany. The topic of this year´s event was “Employability and Internationalization” and it was an ideal opportunity for strengthening relations with the German university through new ways of cooperation.

In this context, Dr. Geldres Weiss emphasized the different doors that opened up thanks to the link with DHBW that has been created in 2016 during the visit of Mr. Gunther Suchy and that made it possible not only to send students there during this time, but also to receive them, what enriches the experiences of these future professionals by “Internationalization at home” and she added: “In this event, the DHBW Ravensburg has connected us with universities in China, South Africa, Lebanon, Turkey, Russia, Serbia, etc.”

“This reveals the importance of international experiences in the teaching and learning process of university students. It is also worth mentioning that we were the only participants from Latin America, besides Mexico. The learning process is based on experiences. Experiential knowledge or learning experience are constructs that all the participating universities appreciate and which they are looking for. One of the conclusions was the need of more research on the impact student mobility has on employability,” she said.

CONSOLIDATING LINKS

In March 2016, Dr. Gunther Suchy of DHBW visited the Universidad de La Frontera with the objective to consolidate the link between both universities. The UFRO Faculty of Law and Business welcomed the initiative and thanks to this partnership, a group of students of its three undergraduate programs had the chance to realize an academic visit in October of the same year.

The experience of the study-visit of the students of FCJE-UFRO to DHBW Ravensburg/Friedrichshafen can be split up into a before and afterwards that permitted the signing of a cooperation agreement between the UFRO and DHBW at the beginning of 2017. This partnership also permitted Yannic Ohms of DHBW to study at the UFRO during the second semester of last year and to become part of the Internationalization Program of the FCJE-UFRO.

On this basis, the student mobility activities continued and this year, two UFRO students – Joaquín Guerrero, a business administration student, and Nicole Ulloa, who studies industrial engineering with specialization in computer science – will be able to spend a semester at the German university.