UAS7 at 2022 AIEA Annual Conference
At the 2022 AIEA Annual Conference, UAS7 had the pleasure to share their first year Virtual Academy experiences on a panel entitled “Taking Virtual to the Next Level”, jointly with Ben Brisch, Director of the DAAD North America Office, Ann-Kristin Matthe, Head of Section Digitalisation for Internationalisation at DAAD Germany, and Annette Richie, Director of Global Academic Programs at our partner University at Albany.
This year's AIEA conference took place in New Orleans, from February 20-23. Under the headline “Why the Internationalization of Higher Education Still Matters”, leading international educators at higher education institutions came together to discuss the burning questions concerning internationalization in Covid-transition.
Our DAAD - UAS7 - SUNY Albany panel was invited to present their experiences from the IVAC program as motivator speeches. So the panel - Taking Virtual to the Next Level: Spotlight on Germany-U.S. Collaboration - left plenty of time for audience questions and a very engaged Q&A. The main message was one of success: DAAD was able to respond quickly to the shutting down of international mobilities by rolling out the IVAC program for international virtual collaboration projects. They were thus able to quickly support virtual international activity in a variety of countries. UAS7 -participating with several SUNY partners- was able to secure a grant and support 250 German and US-partner students in 8 virtual classroom collaborations in the first year of the project, entitled UAS7 Virtual Academy. The audience provided applause after each of the contributions and during the Q&A thanked the DAAD for the quick provision of these funds that benefited numerous US students.