TEMPUS CORINTHIAM

Part III : Management of the International Relation Offices 313• Academic exchange and teaching partnership support• Home language support• Financial and welfare advice for students• Assistance with access to scholarship• Overseas offices managementCOMPREHENSIVE:• Overall responsibility for internationalisation strategies• International visitors and scholars support• International market intelligence and new partners• International alumni relations• Fostering global employability• Integrating the experience of international and domestic students• Delivering staff and students development in cross-cultural matters• Management of international volunteering activities• International network relations(Fielden, 2008).Although it has been indicated that the trend is to broaden and professionalize IROs(e.g. York University in Toronto, University of Leiden), most well-functioning universitieshave not opted for the ‘comprehensive’ model with the full scale of internationalactivities centralized in one office, and have been assigning competences to varioussupporting departments with interest in internationalisation activities instead. However,unless the internationalisation activities are being overseen and coordinated by astrong senior management, such fragmentation may result in a number of challenges.Therefore, the form of the management responsible for implementing internationalisationseems to be more important that the placement of the component IRO sectionsunder one roof.Institutions could develop a broad policy as well as specific measures for the implementationof internationalisation strategies, preferably taking into account the temporalaspect, ideally with benchmarks indicating who is expected to deliver what resultsand how to evaluate them. When considering the form and organizational placementof the IRO, one should keep in mind that the IRO should only be one component of theuniversity’s overall systemic efforts towards a greater degree of internationalisation,i.e. it should neither take over nor be delegated full responsibility for internationalisationand leave others unengaged. It should be the driving force, developing in such away as to best support and enhance the internationalisation process at the institution.