3 June 2016
Last month, the EEUA team participated in the NAFSA 2016 Annual Conference and Expo, which this year took place in Denver, Colorado. Every year EEUA team travels to USA to present its projects at the largest International HigherEd event. We are glad that NAFSA 2016 gave us a good opportunity to meet all our partners and prospective collaborators from all over the world. And it was a great pleasure for us to do this in Denver with its picturesque view of the Rocky Mountains and giant sculptures decorating the city center.
During the 4 days of the conference EEUA conducted about 200 meetings with universities from US, Canada, France, China, Korea, Japan, Mexico, Spain, India, Malaysia, Chile, Brazil, Portugal, South Africa, Oman, Japan, United Kingdom, Bangladesh, Nepal, etc. In addition to this many HEIs just passed by EEUA stand to say hello. It is always nice to meet old friends and loyal participants of IUNC conferences and our projects.
As usual EEUA arranged a Russian Reception as a signature gesture of Russian Hospitality. It has become a very good tradition to tell to the World HigherEd Community about Russian Culture, Customs and Traditions as well as promote Russian Language Learning. At EEUA’s reception people can try various Russian Traditional snacks and drinks such as vodka, pickled cucumbers, mushrooms, brown bread, boubliks etc. All NAFSA participants were welcome to try the refreshments and take part in the merry little competitions and quizes organized by EEUA team. This year almost all Russian Reception participants took away plenty of Russian Traditional Souvenirs such as Matreshka dolls, birchbark baskets, Khokhloma souvenirs (hand-painted wooden spoons and bowls), Russian scarfs, bottles of Russian vodka, and, of course, SAMOVAR as the main prize! Our participants really enjoyed the competitions and most importantly – got familiar with Russian culture and traditions. All of them were awarded with special badges of "Expert in Russian language and Culture".
At NAFSA 2016 we presented the Global Series of IUNC Conferences in 4 parts of the world: IUNC Middle East & Africa 2016, IUNC Latin America 2016, IUNC North America 2017, IUNC Eurasia 2017. As a sign of the widespread interest to this project expressed by the universities from around the world, you can see the messages left on our press-wall banner. Many HEIs left their messages saying that they plan to attend IUNC conference in a particular region or even invited for a meeting at IUNC.
On the whole, our annual participation in NAFSA 2016 gave us the opportunity to make sure that university cooperation is one of the most important aspects of the HigherEd Internationalization and that IRO professionals need specific platforms for networking and further dialogue developing such as IUNC conferences.
