Abstract:

This presentation aims to share a case of good practice at Universidad CEU San Pablo (Spain), during the accreditation process of the Certificate of Quality in Internationalisation (CeQuInt), awarded by the European Consortium for Accreditation in higher education (ECA) in April 2023. Its main purpose is to share how the preparation phase set the ground to find synergies between several units within the university, thus leading to innovation and a higher efficiency in its processes, as well as to improve the internal visibility of internationalisation strategies for all university stakeholders.

The process of obtaining an international accreditation or seal of excellence at Higher Education Institutions (HEI) entails a comprehensive process that involves the participation of several groups of stakeholders at different levels of interest, commitment and representation.

Even within the core stakeholders at a HEI such as students, teaching and non-teaching staff, visibility of initiatives designed to meet the objectives set by the university governance as key is sometimes insufficient. For university staff, it is easier to give visibility to the top-down strategies but harder to learn about the initiatives proposed by peers or students.

Due to the transversal nature of the internationalisation strategies, these involve many departments and different hierarchical levels, permeating the complete institution in a heterogeneous way. However, at some HEIs there is still an outdated vision that any matter that involves international cooperation or foreign students in general falls under the scope of the International Office or its equivalent. On the other hand, quality assurance units at HEIs usually find it difficult to make their daily processes more understandable and familiar to other stakeholders.

In the case of Universidad CEU San Pablo the CeQuInt application process was coordinated by the Vice-Rectorate for Internationalisation but due to the holistic nature of the project, it required the participation of several university departments, being the contribution of the Quality Department key, not only during the application process but also in the measures of improvement to ensure that the proposed objectives were met in timely manner.
As a result of this fruitful cooperation during the application and evaluation process, cooperation between departments has rocketed, and our processes have become more efficient and innovative.

Keywords:

CeQuInt, accreditation, quality, internationalisation.