International Week | Teaching Staff Week

When:
24 - 28 November 2025
Where:
On site at the St. Pölten University of Applied Sciences, Austria

International Week 2025 | Partnerships for Skills

International Partnerships and Their Impact on the Development of Skills

When: 24 – 27 November 2025
Where: On site at the St. Pölten University of Applied Sciences, Austria

‘The European Union needs skilled people to respond to new challenges and stay competitive. But as job requirements change, many workers struggle to keep up and businesses cannot find the right talent. (...) That is why the European Commission is introducing the union of skills, a plan to improve high quality education, training, and lifelong learning.’ (https://commission.europa.eu/topics/eu-competitiveness/union-skills_en). 

Join us for the International Staff Mobility Week 2025! We will place a focus on how international partnerships impact the development of skills. Which skills are needed, and what role do universities play in facilitating the development of these skills? Which cooperations and partnerships foster the growth of these skills? 

Come to St. Pölten for an interactive and innovative exchange with HEIs and other stakeholders: Keynotes and panel discussions, interactive formats, and co-creation sessions offer you the possibility to get to know best practices from different fields, converse with experts from different sectors, and interact with peers from different countries and cultures.

1. Skills & Internationalisation

Questions that will be addressed during this session include:

  • Union of skills, future skills, skills for the labour market, societal skills, soft skills vs. hard skills: Which skills do we need?
  • Which impact do internationalisation measures have on the skill sets of students and staff?
  • How can international collaboration contribute to the acquisition/improvement of these skills in students & staff?
  • International teaching, learning, and cooperation formats: Which level of complexity do we want for our partnerships? Which impact do they have on the skills of students & staff, our institutions, and eventually even our society?

2. Gender & Diversity and Skills 

It takes various skills to handle differences in gender and diversity sensitively. Students of the St. Pölten UAS and the European University Alliance E³UDRES² had the opportunity to compete for the Gender & Diversity Award. The finalists in the different categories will pitch their final theses and be rated by a jury. The winners will then receive an award. While the jury makes its choice, there will be a keynote on the topic of ‘Gender & Diversity’ (60 minutes).

  1. Pitches of students’ theses shortlisted for the Gender & Diversity Award 
  2. Keynote by guest speaker
  3. Gender & Diversity Award Ceremony

3. International Cooperations & Partnerships

How can international partnerships impact the development of skills?
Questions that will be addressed during this session are, e.g.:

  • Acquisition of new partners
  • Where do we want partners?
  • How do we define a good partnership?
  • What constitutes the mutual benefit of the respective partnership?
  • Which role does funding play?
  • How can partners be retained and cooperations strengthened?
  • What role does the balance of activities in the partnership play (e.g., balance of mobility movements between partners)?
  • Who are our strategically important partners? How do we define strategically important cooperations?
  • Evaluation of cooperation partnerships: before the start of a cooperation, during its term
    • The more, the merrier? How many partners do we want?
    • How do we cultivate our partnerships? Who cultivates them? What are our resources for doing this? 
  • Which types of cooperations do we maintain, and which ones are important/necessary for us as a higher education institution?
    • Partner universities in teaching
    • Research and project partnerships
    • (International) stakeholders
    • Further cooperations

4. Open Resources for Education & Research

How can international mobility programmes contribute to the ‘union of skills’?

  • Excellence Programmes: European University Alliances, Erasmus Mundus Programme
  • Excellence for Teaching Joint Master: programme design, exchange of best practices 
  • Call for Contributions: Hand in your examples of best practices in joint master programmes

The role of networks:

  • European Project Semester (EPS) network, SocNet98
  • businet, Africa-UniNet, Eurasia-Pacific-Uninet
  • etc.

5. Capacity Building for International Initiatives

  • Cooperations for the exchange of students and teaching staff and for staff training:
    • Bilateral Agreements / Memorandum of Understanding
    • Erasmus+ cooperations
    • Ceepus, Swiss-European Mobility Programme, Fulbright, etc.
  • Short-term mobility cooperations: 
    • Overview of formats:
      • Best practices and exchange of good practices
      • How to find good, reliable, and engaged partners for short-term formats like ‘Blended Intensive Programmes’ (BIPs), summer schools, etc.
      • Physical, blended, virtual (COILs, MOOCs, lectures) mobilities
      • Shared lectures / co-teaching activities
    • Game-based skills/learning, entrepreneurial, challenged-based learning (e.g., E³UDRES²)
    • Career Building & Graduate Network: 
      • Cooperations with international companies and organisations, business partners
      • Regional partnerships and networks
      • Internships abroad

Furthermore, we are planning a ‘World Café’ on the first day of the International Week. Participants and representatives from different departments and service units will have the opportunity to engage in networking and to get to know each other.

Target Groups

Representatives of partner institutions, international offices, R&D officers, staff of teaching and learning centres, curriculum developers, quality managers, teaching staff, researchers, policymakers, stakeholders from the regional/national/international higher education and R&I context (e.g., funding agencies and regional development)

Programme at a glance

Further activities

Additionally, the following further activities will take place during the International Week (24–28 November 2025):