Observation is from the 2014-2018 Institutional Assessment, which also highlights challenges in relation to the pandemic and crisis period
In recent years, internationalization has gained a strategic focus for Unicamp. The mobility of students, staff and teachers intensified and strategic partnerships were established. With a strong international presence mainly in the research and postgraduate areas, Unicamp, like other educational institutions, now has challenges related to budget and the limitation of the movement of people, imposed by the new coronavirus pandemic. These are some of the notes from the external committee that worked on the Institutional Evaluation of the University for the period between 2014 and 2018.
The mark of internationalization at Unicamp dates back to its creation in 1966. The concern with the international aspect was already expressed in the founding axes, being one of the only universities that had this concern since its conception. Creator of Unicamp and rector for the first 12 years of the newly created university, professor Zeferino Vaz hired more than 200 foreign professors to work at the institution, back in the 1960s, already creating an environment for cultural exchange. Since then, especially with the advancement of globalization, internationalization has been increasingly understood as a way of qualifying research, teaching and extension.
Science goes global
For professor at the Institute of Economics (IE) and Executive Director of International Relations at Unicamp, Mariano Laplane, internationalization has become imperative for institutions linked to science as societies become more connected. Global problems make international connections necessary.
“We are at a stage in humanity where we face problems that affect everyone. Climate change, extreme phenomena, disasters, management of increasingly scarce natural resources, diseases that are spreading across the planet. Science has become global because society has become global and the economy has become global - for better and for worse. If the university wants to honor its commitment to transmitting knowledge to society, it needs to be international. This does not mean ceasing to be Brazilian, but it needs to be international”, he reflects.
In the opinion of the dean of Postgraduate Studies at Unicamp, Nancy Lopes, restricting oneself to the location can also create endogeny. In other words, people from the same institution or location remaining working or studying in the same locations can narrow and bias the understanding of problems. “This is the great point of internationalization: it is important because you oxygenate our research here by bringing new themes, new technologies and methodologies and you publicize what is done here”, she points out.
Publications in cooperation are also important as a way of diversifying the view on issues. However, the dean highlights that there are problems that are of a local nature. She remembers, for example, that she already wrote an article about variations of the Portuguese language and that she received criticism for not writing it in English, which was not consistent with the content of the research “There are problems that are very local to Brazil, there are areas where It is important to study local problems, and then targeting international journals will not reach the audience that should be reached”, he says.
The language challenge
A professor at Unicamp since 1985, the director of the Executive Board of International Relations (DERI) is an example of how teaching at Unicamp attracts attention from neighboring countries. Mariano is from Argentina and, in addition to working on international relations issues, his career is marked by training in several countries. With a degree in Israel, a master's degree in the United States and a doctorate in Brazil, the professor remembers very well how interested he became in the country.
During his childhood, he recalls, he listened to Brazilian radio during Argentine siestas, a period of rest between lunch time and an afternoon period found mainly in warmer regions. Music linked him, through his interest in culture, to the country. Years later, Mariano came to do a doctorate in Economics at Unicamp. He still had plans to return to Argentina, but ended up falling in love with the proposal from the Institute of Economics, as well as Unicamp and Brazil, and stayed. “And I had never imagined that I would live a large part of my life here and learn Portuguese”, he says.
Like Mariano, several Latin American students are interested in Unicamp and the country. Colombians, Ecuadorians and Peruvians were the nationalities that were most enrolled as students in 2018, the latest in the recently released institutional assessment. That same year, 320 foreign undergraduate students and 979 postgraduate students were enrolled at the University. The language barrier is more subtle in neighboring countries, and Unicamp's recognized postgraduate courses end up attracting more students from these locations. It is possible to note, however, that the Chinese and French also form a significant audience. But, as the external committee's evaluators also point out, in general there is a more difficult barrier in relation to language, as the course subjects are mostly in Portuguese.
“Teaching in Portuguese does not attract non-speaking students. That's why we started to encourage foreign language teaching. The evaluation committee also detected this as positive, but we needed to move forward. Our main challenge is language. If we want to open doors and integrate, we have to expand the use of a second language at universities. Multiply the alternatives so that students who don't speak English can learn. Or Spanish, French, Italian...”, says Mariano.
Currently, some postgraduate programs have subjects taught in English and one program, Bioenergy, has its entire program in English. However, in the opinion of the dean of Postgraduate Studies, Nancy Lopes, for this strategy to be strengthened, it is necessary to invest in strengthening learning in a second language for Unicamp students.
'“We need to invest so that this postgraduate student, when they leave graduate school, is proficient in at least one language. Most of our internationalization is done from Brazil to abroad. A bottleneck in this is that almost all of our subjects are taught in Portuguese, so for a program that wants to attract students from abroad, it is necessary to have more subjects in English”, says the dean.
For her, Unicamp has been advancing on this point. “Many units have elective courses, summer courses taking advantage of visiting professors from abroad. This is a construction process”, he emphasizes. There is an effort, according to Nancy, for example, to include subjects that are offered in English in this language in the course catalogue, which was not done before. This way, foreign students can better view this offer. Competitions in English, to attract teachers from other countries, are also a possibility.
Cooperation and development networks
The institutional evaluation period also included a few years of Science Without Borders, which ended in 2015. The program represented a large contribution of resources that took internationalization to a prominent level in Brazilian educational institutions. For the director of DERI, this was reflected in Unicamp's Plans 2016-2020, which included internationalization as one of the University's lines of development and, as a result, allocated resources for the mobility of teachers, students and staff.
Currently, among the internationalization programs to which Unicamp is linked are the Institutional Internationalization Program (Print), the Santander network and the Montevideo Group Universities Association (AUGM) network.
Through AUGM, in which Unicamp has participated since its creation in 1991, mobility between universities in Latin America is encouraged, strengthening a space for regional academic integration. Mariano points out that there is an effort by Unicamp to give visibility to the scholarships offered by this network, as students often turn to countries in the Global North and are unaware of the opportunities to study in Latin America.
“Despite our proximity, we know very little about each other. Through these networks, we have scholarships that allow students to do mobility. We have a lot of people who would like to go to Spain, Italy, Portugal, but resources are scarce. But why not go to Mexico, Peru, which has the oldest universities in the Americas? We made a big effort to get students to discover it”, he highlights, also mentioning the Latin American Fair 2019, carried out with this objective.
Print, a Capes program, is aimed at postgraduate studies and has mainly countries from the Global North as a priority. Among its objectives is the formation of international research networks with the intention of improving the quality of academic production. Print finances doctoral students, post-doctors and professors for missions abroad and sandwich scholarships, allocates resources to visiting professors and grants other types of scholarships, such as post-doctoral scholarships. Already Through the Santander network, around 200 undergraduate students are sent per year for international mobility. Notices for strategic partnerships are also included.
In addition to these programs and networks, we also highlight the support provided by the São Paulo State Research Support Foundation (Fapesp), a body that allocates resources to research carried out collaboratively. Other initiatives refer to agreements directly with foreign universities and initiatives such as Sérgio Vieira de Melo Chair which, among various teaching, research and extension actions, includes students in refugee situations at Unicamp.
Challenges
If internationalization has advanced in recent years, it is clear that the pandemic has caused losses, whether by restricting the movement of people or by worsening budgetary issues. To respond to the challenges, the members of the external evaluation committee indicate some strategies that can be considered.
With the migration to remote teaching, one of the possibilities raised is the offering of subjects together with other universities. This modality already exists in some areas at Unicamp, such as Mechanical Engineering, where there are subjects shared with Japanese universities. But the idea, according to the director of DERI, is that this can be expanded.
“We need to find a way for them to have some type of international educational and training experience, even if it is without leaving home. This can be done by bringing the experience and experience of studying at another foreign university closer to the undergraduate student. Even if it is attending classes virtually, taking a subject where there are students from other countries. There are several ways to do this, we had already been studying options at Unicamp and this is becoming urgent”, he concludes.
The so-called "internationalization at home", which involves strategies such as offering subjects in cooperation with other universities; offering courses open to foreign students, with a pedagogical proposal that makes students interact, is one of the ways. It will not replace the cultural experience of getting to know another country and other cultures, as both Mariano and Nancy point out. However, it presents itself as a way of offering some type of international experience to students.
Institutional assessment
The 2014-2018 Institutional Assessment report was released in September. In the evaluation process, a team of professionals external to the University focused on the institution's strengths and weaknesses, also indicating recommendations. Among the highlighted axes are: modern and innovative research, social and ethnic-racial inclusion and strengthening internationalization, which are themes of this series of articles around evaluation. Check out the first reports:
Modern, innovative and targeted research are axes that make Unicamp stand out
Social and ethnic-racial inclusion at Unicamp has advanced in recent years
