Radboud University: AMID Young Professional programme’ wins Internationalisation Award 2022
The Internationalisation Award 2022 is awarded to the AMID Young Professional programme’. This award is conferred annually to initiatives contributing to the internationalisation of education at Radboud University and/or a more inclusive, international academic community. The ’Community of Practice’ (CoP)’ initiative of the Strategic Human Resource Management section of the Nijmegen School of Management receives an honourable mention. Representatives of the AMID Young Professionals programme will receive the cash prize of €10,000 during the Opening of the Academic Year.
Educating young professionals in their role as ‘change agents’
AMID targets AMID focuses on young professionals who solve complex socio-economic problems in pursuit of sustainable development. The aim of the programme is to educate, facilitate and inspire these professionals in their role as ‘change agents’. AMID Young Professionals programme alumni work within a diversity of organisations, amongst which NGOs, governments, companies, consultancy agencies and knowledge institutions, all over the world. During 4 days of the week, participants work at an organisation committed to realising the Sustainable Development Goals, such as clean drinking water and gender equality. One day a week they participate in (online and face-to-face) Radboud University classes.
International learning experience, societal impact, new educational practices and diversity
The jury was unanimously impressed by this initiative and concluded it scored highly on each of the selection criteria, like the international (learning) experience for both students and staff, societal impact and the attention for new educational practices and diversity. The programme was also praised for the fact that it aims at students from countries with which our university does not yet cooperate a lot, like Kenia. Last year, as a pilot, also participants from Uganda, Ethiopia, Zimbabwe and India took part online. This way the programme does not focus on Europe and the United States, as is often the case. Finally, the jury applauded the programme’s link with the Sustainable Development Goals.
Cash prize
The winner of the Internationalisation Award receives a cash prize of €10,000. The initiators of the AMID Young Professional programme want to use it to improve the learning experience of the online participants of the beforementioned pilot, from countries like Uganda and Ethiopia.
Honourable mention
This year the ‘Community of Practice’ (CoP) initiative of the Strategic Human Resource Management section of the Nijmegen School of Management will receive an honourable mention. This initiative started in 2020 as an explicit reaction to the corona lockdowns, and continue with it after the pandemic.
A CoP is a learning environment where participants can learn from one another by observing, interacting with experts and discussing with colleagues. By combining the CoP principles with Collaborative Online International Learning (COIL) the initiators have started 2 international projects in which students, PhDs and staff cooperated in academic research by joint weekly online sessions. The intention behind this honourable mention is mainly to encourage its initiators to further develop this relatively new initiative.
Representatives of the AMID Young Professionals programme will receive prize during the Opening of the Academic Year.