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Higher education student and staff mobility project
Date du début: 1 juin 2014, Date de fin: 30 sept. 2015 PROJET  TERMINÉ 

The Agricultural Academy (AA) applied for a mobility project for higher education, training and staff in the end of February, 2014. The project proposition was approved by the Bulgarian National Agency (The Human Resources Development Center) and a contract for financial support was signed between the Agency and the Agricultural Academy on the 22.10.2014. The first training mobilities for staff from the AA started a week later, on the 1.11.2014. – 3 educational mobilities of academic staff from one of the structural units of the AA (the Institute of Agricultural Economics) to the Humboldt University, Berlin, Germany. The National Agency had approved for this project 91 outgoing educational mobilities for staff with total duration of 1274 days and 6 outgoing educational mobilities for students with total duration of 72 months. The main objectives of the project, set by the Governing board of the AA, were the following: • To increase the inflow of scientific and educational knowledge into the structural units of the AA in order to improve the level of key competences and skills; • To strengthen the scientific and educational cooperation between the AA and its current partner organizations from Europe; • To begin new partnerships with other leading educational and scientific organizations from Europe; • To enhance the employability of students and staff from the AA and to improve their career prospects; • To broaden the understanding of innovative educational and scientific practices of the participating students and staff; • To increase the awareness of students and staff from the AA to the "Erasmus+" Programme and the different project opportunities it offers. • To improve the language competences of the participating students and staff. The possibility for participation in educational mobilities met with great interest from the academic and administrative staff of the AA. Although the staff mobilities, awarded in the project, were 91, after some reorganization, the AA managed to increase their number to 115, without applying for additional funding from the National Agency. This was made possible through decreasing the duration of some of the mobilities. All of the mobilities, which took place in this project, were outbound staff mobilities for training. The personal, which participated in them, was either academic or administrative. No student mobilities took place in the project. The main reason was the fact that the grant support for students did not include funding for transport and the students, who have applied for mobilities could not find additional finances. Due to the nature of the AA, the range of the performed activities was mainly in the field of the agricultural science. However, these include very broad and different educational fields – plant and animal genetics, soil sciences, agro-economics, plant growing, animal husbandry, rural development, fisheries and aquacultures, viticulture and enology, etc. The types of undertaken activities by the beneficiaries are different but include mainly skill training, job shadowing, attendance at lectures, visits of libraries, laboratories and other scientific and educational premises, field observation, familiarization with modern equipment and research and education methods, meetings and discussions on current research and educational innovations in the field of agriculture, direct participation in research and education, preparation of future project collaboration, preparation of papers, etc. The results from the mobilities are both short- and long term. During the project duration and immediately after it several important research papers were prepared by beneficiaries of the mobilities, which will contribute directly to their career development, to the knowledge, which they use to educate the students, to the current research and educational projects, in which they and other staff participate. The long term benefits are mainly in the field of the received knowledge and skills. Virtually all participants acquired new and important information in their respective areas. This information will be used in the development of new and the upgrading of existing scientific methods and educational curricula. For example, the beneficiaries from the Agricultural Institute, Stara Zagora (one of the structural units of the AA), have been introduced by their hosts from the University of Padova, to new analyze methodologies and survey equipment of fatty acids and their isomeric forms in milk and eggs in cattle, sheep and poultry and the systems for gas emissions from ruminants by in vitro methods using lyophilization and cryopreservation of rumen content. These new methods will be used in the annual update of research and educational practices, which takes place each year in the AA. The improved knowledge will be a great boost to research and education in the field of animal husbandry in Bulgaria.

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