LEARNING AND COOPERATING: EMUNI STAFF VISITS UNIVERSITY OF NOVI SAD

Ana Šajn EMUNI’s Human Resources and Project Financial Administrative Manager has recently completed a staff mobility for training in Serbia within the framework of Erasmus+.

Between 30 June and 2 July, Ana visited the University of Novi Sad (UNS), which, with its 50 thousand students and 5 thousands employees is one of the largest educational and research centres in Central Europe. The UNS is a comprehensive university providing curricula in nearly all fields of science and higher education and boasts offers 350 accredited study programs at the level of Bachelor, Master, Specialist and Doctoral studies.

With EMUNI’s interest for innovative potential in mind, Ana visited the large campus and was introduced to the staff and the study programmes. The main goal of this mobility was for her to meet with the project team and exchange with them on staff management and project eligibility screening.

The University of Novi Sad thoroughness and effectiveness in project management had already struck our colleague Ana in 2019, during an introductory meeting of the Knowledge Project Alliance (KA2) held by the European Commission in Brussels.

It goes without saying that this particular mobility to Novi Sad was a precious learning opportunity for our colleague and, by extension, for EMUNI. Namely, the meeting with Ms. Ana Šoti, Project Office manager, was productive and inspiring.  It was a useful opportunity to discuss the division of labour under the UNS project department, as well as drawing inspiration from the UNS’ way of organising the search for new consortia and projects.

Ana claimed that the mobility training was important as she could learn a lot from Mr. Bojan Batinič, project director. His role in projects is to check the eligibility of the project and ensure that all things are done in accordance with the rules of the European Commission.

As brief and dense the mobility training was, Ana certainly did not miss the opportunity to present EMUNI University, its network and its institutional bodies. Such a presentation also allowed to introduce the UNS researchers to EMUNI’s journal, the International Journal for Euro-Mediterranean Studies.

Ultimately this visit was an occasion to seek out the mentorship of experienced personnel of a large and innovative academic institution. Additionally it provided the ideal circumstances to explore future collaboration between EMUNI and the University of Novi Sad.