BMU INTERNATIONALIZATION STRATEGY
Belgrade Metropolitan University has “International Cooperation Office” (ICO) established. It is divided in two departments: 1. Department for international projects and 2. Mobility department.
1. Department of international projects is in charge for all sorts of international cooperation. As a priority they are working on Erasmus + and other projects from organizational and administrative aspect. In order to ensure quality of the project organization from administrative and academic point of view, each project is led by one professor (expert from the field of project topic) and a project administrator – a staff of the International Cooperation Office. This has proved to be the best combination and the projects are implemented successfully.
2. Mobility departmentis in charge for all kinds of mobilities. Two roles are provided by this department: Mobility Coordinator and Academic Coordinator.
a. Academic coordinator is a teaching staff authorized by the University to conduct the academic recognition of the period of mobility and to adopt the “Decision on Academic Recognition” for the period of mobility, as well as mentoring and decision-making at the level of language policy.
b. Mobility Coordinator – the staff performing administrative tasks related to mobility (coordinates money distribution, preparation of contracts and other forms, etc.), as well as providing support to students in the application process and after the mobility period.
Members of the International Cooperation Office interact and communicate with each other every day, starting with mornings’ briefings. They also have regular weekly meetings to analyse completed tasks and discuss new ones. The Head of the International Cooperation Office is in charge for creating of daily, weekly and monthly plans and for their supervision. When needed, he communicates with the Rector or deans, in order to coordinate activities of ICO with other departments of the university.
The General Secretary of the University, as well as the Rector, supervises all activities mentioned above. The legal representative is Rector and all final decisions are approved by him. The International Cooperation Office has its own mechanisms as well as standard procedures, and finally, all prepared documents are signed by the Rector. ICO has unique database accessible by employees only, along with a database they used to support emails and open source platforms for internal project management, depending on the project needs.