"It's highly recommendable and beneficial for your workplace." That sentence sums up the views of the three members of service and administrative staff who, in the academic year 2013-2014, received UPF's first Erasmus mobility grants geared to training for such employees. Staff in the category in question had previously been left without the option of spending time training in foreign higher education institutions when the international mobility grant programme run by the Agency for the Management of University and Research Grants (AGAUR) was suspended in 2011.

Josep Ferrer, vice-rector for International Relations, underlines how important it is that internationalization extend to each and every one of the groups  what make up the University's community. "Having our service and administrative staff gain firsthand experience of how other centres operate and draw  comparisons with how we do things at UPF is very useful", he says. " It can help us improve aspects of our management, particularly those most closely connected to our international dimension."

Ferrer also points out that such arrangements can have positive consequences at the institutional level. "Contact between members of service and administrative staff from different institutions is sometimes an important factor in generating the trust necessary for considering joint initiatives and  stablishing agreements involving, for example, student mobility, double degrees, multilateral academic programmes or research projects."

Pau Juste, the deputy general manager responsible for the Human Resources and Organization Area, emphasizes the purpose of the grants. "We want to offer service and administrative staff scope for professional improvement by paving the way for them to train abroad", he states. " It's a path that very few of them take and we think we've got a unique opportunity to align our aims related to internationalization and personal development", he adds. "In the case of service and administrative staff, we have to overcome language barriers and encourage them to look beyond the functional, support-oriented nature of their job. Learning about international best practices can have a highly beneficial effect in terms of improving our organization."

• Three participants' experiences
  • Mireia Calm
  • Jordi Serret
  • Cristina Chiva
• More grants for 2014-2015

Three participants experiences
Mireia Calm, technical coordinator for the management of multilingualism at the Centre for Teaching Quality and Innovation (CQUID), and Jordi Serret,  quality and evaluation officer in the Studies, Planning and Evaluation Unit, were two of the successful applicants when UPF first offered the grants in the academic year 2013-2014.

Calm undertook a training period at Maastricht University in the Netherlands, an opportunity that arose through a professional contact she had made at a conference. She feels that the knowledge she has acquired will serve her well. "My training period has provided me with a new perspective on university language policy and a new approach to managing multilingualism", she says, before explaining that UPF needs to "develop strategies to consolidate its language model, based on a context of increasing internationalization and a multilingual university profile".

She has no hesitation in encouraging her colleagues to follow her example, with a few provisos. " I'd recommend the experience to other service and administrative staff, as long as their objective is very clear, their programme has been agreed upon and they have pre-established contacts, to ensure that they make the most of their training period and it meets their expectations."

Mireia Calm: "My training period has provided me with a new perspective on university language policy

Serret spent his training period in Denmark, in Aarhus University's Talent and Research Unit and graduate schools, and the University of Copenhagen's Health and Medical Sciences Graduate School. It gave him an insight into how the internal quality assurance systems the two universities apply to their PhDs are conceived and work. "I've come back with quite a few ideas, as we need to implement an equivalent system at UPF and we don't have a lot of experience in that regard", he remarks. "It's very interesting to see that there are other ways of working and tackling the same challenges, and to realize that we share many of the same problems", he continues. "A training period gives you a more international profile and raises awareness of the work we do at UPF."

Jordi Serret: "I've learned about different internal quality assurance systems for PhDs"

Cristina Chiva, a specialist from the Proteomics Service, also received a grant in the academic year 2013-2014, allowing her to spend time at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Lausanne. She visited its microfluidics laboratory to weigh up the possibility of using the technology in question for proteomic sample preparation purposes.

Her overall view of her training period is very positive. "It has benefited me in three ways", she affirms. "As a life sciences professional, it has opened my eyes to another type of technology and its possible applications; as a member of the Proteomics Service, it has helped me strike up a cooperative relationship with a great deal of potential; and as a UPF employee, I've found getting to know another laboratory and different people enriching", she explains.

Cristina Chiva: "We've been able to establish a cooperative relationship with a leading microfluidics group"

More grants for 2014-2015
The importance UPF's General Manager's Office attributes to these grants is reflected by the fact that the total number available is set to rise to ten when this year's call for applications is made (in the first term of 2014-2015, if all goes to plan). Each successful applicant will receive up to €1,200, jointly financed by the University and the Erasmus programme, to cover the cost of a 5-day training period and travel expenses.

A selection committee chaired by the vice-rector for International Relations studies applications to determine how well they fit in with UPF's strategies. Besides considerations such as language skills, the key aspect on which decisions are based is the degree of correspondence between the proposed activity programme, the knowledge and skills the training period will provide, and the improvements their deployment in the applicant's workplace will entail.

Coordinated by the Development Section of the Human Resources and Organization Area, in conjunction with the International Relations Service, calls for
applications are open to all service and administrative staff who fulfil particular requisites. Applicants must describe a project and design a work  programme tailored to their interests and job. Their proposals have to meet with the agreement of their host institution, which must be in a European country covered by the Erasmus programme.