The University of Pécs Receives the Most Prestigious European Internationalisation Award

The University of Pécs has won this year's EAIE Award for Excellence in Internationalisation for the online short-term programmes developed and managed by the International Centre.

In response to the COVID-19 pandemic, the Study Abroad and Summer School Office of the International Centre has been implementing many international virtual programmes for students at global partner universities and the University of Pécs since early 2020. The programmes include online summer and winter courses, workshops, trainings, collaborative online courses developed with American and Italian universities, and a virtual internship program.

Students from 70 universities in 40 countries from Europe, Asia, the United States and Africa have participated in the virtual programmes. The academic component of the programmes was provided by the Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences, the Faculty of Law and the Faculty of Cultural Sciences, Education and Regional Development. In addition to the high- quality academic programmes, exciting social events were also organized for the participants in the evenings.

The European Association for International Educators (EAIE) is one of the world's largest organisations dedicated to the internationalisation of higher education. It has 2,500 members from 70 countries around the world. Each year, the organisation awards a prize to a European university that has achieved an outstanding and innovative record in internationalisation activities that can serve as a model of good practice for other higher education institutions.

The EAIE said the following about the University of Pecs when announcing the award:

“…This year’s winner went above and beyond: in response to the pandemic, the University of Pécs, Hungary, quickly acquired a resilient attitude and developed an impressive range of new short-term virtual mobility programmes such as a virtual global internship programme, a COIL project, online summer and winter schools and a career launch strategy training for all students. Their innovative reorganisation paid special attention to creating a community and provides an outstanding example of how to create added value with exciting student-led social programmes…” (https://www.eaie.org/blog/2021-eaie-award-winners.html)

The University of Pécs is the first Hungarian university to receive this prestigious international award.

The award ceremony will take place at EAIE’s online conference on 1 October 2021.