The UO project has received funding of over PLN 100,000 in the Welcome to Poland competition of the National Agency for Academic Exchange (NAWA). The implementation of the programme began on 5 November 2018 and will last until the end of 2019. The action called “Welcome to the UO” includes training for university employees in the field of service and integration of students from abroad, translation of documents and regulations concerning studies and related matters (those which have not yet been translated to the English language).

In addition, our university will be enriched with plaques in English so that foreigners can better find their way around the university, and the library will receive a database of over 100,000 digital books in the disciplines in which foreign students are educated. There will also be integration activities, such as a series of meetings under the slogan “Tastes of the World” as a platform for presenting the cultures ” from the inside” of a dozen or so nationalities who study at the UO and “International Weekends”. – i.e. meetings of the UO staff members and students in private homes.

The University received almost 115 thousand zlotys of co-financing. The authors of the project are Katarzyna Herok and Oksana Smolnikova from the Department of Scientific Research and International Cooperation. Support in handling and accounting for the project is provided by the Project Management Centre of the UO.

– Students from abroad are as important to us as the Polish ones – emphasizes Prof. Janusz Słodczyk, Vice-Rector for Research and Finance. – They require the same amount of effort and attention, and in certain specific areas our involvement must be even more intense. First of all, it is about breaking the language barrier, service in English and – most importantly – about creating a good atmosphere around them, and about integration. The benefits for the university are obvious: students from outside the EU pay tuition fees, rent our halls of residence, and come with motivation to work. The Ministry established NAWA precisely to internationalise the universities and I am glad that the UO receives grants already in the first round of calls, all the more so as half of the applicants did not receive funding.

This academic year about 100 foreigners from all over the world took up studies in English at the University of Opole (Economics – International Business, and Sustainable Development, Sociology – Intercultural Communication, English Philology, English in Public Communication, and Master of Liberal Arts), and within the exchange programmes there will be another 200 foreigners studying at the UO.