UAB presents Ortelius, a bridge uniting Europe, America and Asia

UAB presented the Ortelius programme, a new academic recognition areas in which the UAB will act as a bridge between universities in East Asia and in Latin America, a common project which aspires to become a line of communication for all participating centres. The platform was created to design and share joint programmes at both undergraduate and postgraduate level.

17/11/2011

The presentation took place on 17 November at the UAB-Casa Convalescència in Barcelona. It was presided by Artur Mas, President of the Government of Catalonia, and included speeches from Ana Ripoll, Rector of the UAB, and José Antonio Villasante, General Director of Banco Santander and Director of the Santander Universities Global Division. Representatives of all 32 university institutions participating in the Ortelius programme attended the event. Among member universities are 18 from Asia (from China and South Korea) and 13 from Latin America (from Argentina, Brazil, Colombia, Costa Rica, Mexico and Paraguay), with a total of almost 900,000 undergraduate and postgraduate students enrolled.

José Antonio Villasante, General Director of Banco Santander, explained that Banco Santander is convinced of the importance "of the internationalisation and creation of cooperation networks between universities, as represented by this programme". According the Villasante, in this new world scene, the university is "an absolutely key institution in our future".

Rector Ana Ripoll explained that the UAB is aware of the competitiveness at university level, of globalisation and the need for international cooperation. She stated that "our university has set its goal on standing out as the most internationally known Catalan university in which the most intensive research is carried out". Under this context, the Ortelius programme is the "logical consequence of a clearly international trajectory which begun many years ago". According to Rector Ripoll, such a programme can help guarantee the survival of "a viable, sustainable, innovative, excellent and committed university model".

Artur Mas, President of the Government of Catalonia, closed the presentation stating that "if the university is a door of hope to our future, its internationalisation in a small country such as Catalonia can represent the existence or disappearance of our economies". President Mas pointed out that "the university gives us hope for the future" because it gives young people more possibilities in finding a quality job. For President Mas, the Ortelius programme is a clear example of the symbiosis of two fundamental concepts: "universities and internationalisation".

The programme is named after Abraham Ortelius (1527-1598), Flemish geographer considered the first modern cartographer. His most renowned work, Theatrum Orbis Terrarum (Anvers, 1570), was the first modern atlas in which America appeared jointly with Europe and Asia.

A Bridge Uniting Asia and Latin America

The Ortelius programme aims to be a bridge to help foster mobility between students and professors involved in programmes at universities, remote from one another by wishing to share objectives and teaching content and offer a shared and attractive range of academic subjects.

The objective of the Ortelius programme is to design double and multiple degrees at both undergraduate and master's degree levels, and foster mobility of students, lecturers and researchers, as well as that of administrative personnel from all member universities.

The promotion and creation of joint degrees must establish for the future joint doctoral programmes based on common research fields in which member universities can participate. Young researchers will thus be able to work on action associations, long-term networking and collaborations between research groups at UAB, and in Asia and Latin America. Ortelius also will offer the opportunity to create doctoral programmes in collaboration with firms located in the vicinity of the institutions and which support the values of innovation and knowledge transfer.

In addition to establishing agreements between universities, one of the core proposals of the project is to achieve that institutions and business sectors in each country work towards improving education and attracting talent with the creation of grants under the Ortelius programme, a social initiative which needs the support of people and institutes aware of the important role universities play in creating human capital.

The Erasmus mobility programme for students of European universities has been widely acclaimed for its success. The Ortelius programme intends to go a step further, by the academic recognition of mobility through participation in double or multiple degrees.

The Orterlius programme implies an increase in the internationalisation of the UAB and of participating universities, and will provide added value to the curriculum of students studying under the programme.

"Ortelius Semester", the Basis for a Common Platform

The experience gained by the UAB over recent years in designing joint programmes, in the context of the European Higher Education Area, and in its strategic orientation towards collaborations with Asian and Latin American universities, represents the starting point needed to carry out this project.

This experience has given rise to the "Ortelius Semester", conceived as the minimum common unit of cooperation required to establish a joint teaching and learning programme, and a common platform for intercontinental collaborations. This is the framework that, with considerable flexibility, must allow the harmonising of the academic and administrative requirements pertaining to the different programmes, submitted as they are to the specific regulations of each university and country, in order to ensure that recognition of the double or multiple degrees taken by participating students becomes a reality.

Once the conditions set out in the framework of the Ortelius programme have been accepted, those universities interested in participating may then offer a shared range of degree and master’s programmes, in such a way that the student may obtain a double or multiple degree, always bearing in mind that in the initial phase-establishing agreement at the level of master’s degrees will be given priority, due to the greater facility with which this can be achieved.

Compliance with these conditions, embodied in the agreements between universities, and their monitoring by the UAB Ortelius Office, will entitle the joint programme in question to be accredited as an "Ortelius Programme."

Pioneer in Internationalisation

Relations with Latin America are a strategic part of the UAB internationalisation project. UAB holds several collaboration and exchange agreements with several universities in those countries. A large number of students enrolled in postgraduate programmes at UAB are from Latin America.

With regard to Asia, UAB was one of the first universities in Spain to offer studies in East Asia, and it is the first of Spain to have opened offices in Shanghai and in Seoul.

The success of the Erasmus programme and UAB's recognition as a Campus of International Excellence are two reasons which have spurred on the university in creating this new intercontinental network of mobility and exchange programmes.

Banco Santander collaborates in these and other initiatives offered by Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona through its Santander Universities Global Division, through which the bank is socially committed to offering a stable alliance to over 970 academic centres in America, China, Portugal, Spain, Russia and UK.