Medicine and Health Sciences

Policy plan for internationalisation

Faculty of Medicine and Health Sciences

The Internationalisation Commission (CI-FGGW) is a policy advisory body of the Faculty of Medicine and Health Sciences. The Commission is a think tank and implements the points of action of the University of Antwerp mission statement, which have a link with internationalisation and development cooperation in the fields of ​​health, health care and welfare.

The Commission has drawn up an ambitious policy plan for the internationalisation of the education at the Faculty, including a concrete vision, objectives and activities. 

Vision

Our society is characterized by a rapidly increasing globalisation and diversification. This is particularly the case for the divercity Antwerp. The harbor and the metropolitan atmosphere attract people from all over the world. Hence, medical doctors, physiotherapists, nurses, midwives and epidemiologists who graduate at the UAntwerp will end up in a cosmopolitan and diverse environment, whether they choose to stay at home or pursue a career abroad. In any case, they will work with patients and colleagues with different ethnic, cultural, ideological and/or socioeconomic backgrounds. The faculty’s mission is therefore to deliver professional health workers who can function anywhere in the world and who can operate adequately in an international and a diverse social context.

Therefore, students need to acquire and develop international and intercultural competences during their training. The faculty facilitates this by pursuing qualitative student mobility (exchange and degree), by integrating the international dimension in the curricula, by encouraging lecturers to act as catalysts for internationalisation and by strengthening the teaching-research nexus. 

Strategic objectives (2018-2021)

The strategic objectives indicate what the faculty will do in the coming years (2018-2021) to realise its vision on internationalisation of the education:

  1. Qualitative student mobility is realised; 
  2. The international dimension is structurally and carefully embedded in the curricula; 
  3. Lecturers act as catalysts for internationalisation; 
  4. The faculty is widely known as an international faculty;
  5. International capacity building is a transverse theme within the faculty. 

These strategic objectives form the foundations for the internationalisation policies of the faculty and are a reference for day-to-day activities. They are discussed in detail in the Policy plan for internationalisation of the education (2018-2021) of the faculty.