Win for International Education Project

Humanities and Social Sciences colleagues receive award from the UK Council for International Student Affairs (UKCISA) for a project aimed at welcoming international students to Newcastle University.

Dr Alina Schartner, Sara Kozáková and Chang Liu, all from the School of Education, Communication and Languages Sciences, were awarded the Paul Webley award for their project ‘Beyond cultural differences: Critical intercultural orientation workshops for newly arrived students’. The initiative is part of the NU Global Education Experience Programme.

The project team created a toolkit for a programme of five intercultural workshops on the themes of identity, cultural values and beliefs, diversity, personal values, and self-awareness, based on the UNESCO ‘story circles’ approach. The workshops are now integrated into Newcastle University’s International Welcome programme, and can be replicated by other institutions using the international grant scheme resources.

Member of staff delivering a workshop to 4 students

“It is such an honour to receive this award and be recognised for something that we feel very passionate about. Newcastle University is aiming to be a truly global institution and the work we do to welcome students from all over the world is crucial. Having our work represented in the NU International Welcome programme is an achievement, but being recognised for this work by the UKCISA is something we are very proud of”.

Dr Alina Schartner, Senior Lecturer in Applied Linguistics

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