Manipal University Bags a Major EU Grant for Capacity Building in Higher Education

BANGALORE, August 9, 2016 /PRNewswire/ --

Adding another feather in its cap, Manipal University has bagged a prestigious Capacity Building project in higher education from the European Union in its Erasmus Plus call for applications. This meant an approval for a grant of EUR 564178 (around Rs. 4 crore) to the University for establishing a CLIL Resource Centre.

Dr. Vinod Bhatt, Vice Chancellor of Manipal University, said, "It is a matter of pride that we are the only one from India to have got this funding as a LEAD applicant." This is also the largest grant for humanities and social sciences within Manipal University, which he added "upholds the idea that Manipal University has its wings widely stretched to include all disciplines."

Manipal University is one among the 147 projects selected in this call from among 736 applications received from all over the world. In this highly competitive evaluation, it has made it to the final list as the only one from India.

The Head of the Department of European Studies, Dr. Neeta Inamdar, who developed this application, said, "The project is about establishing a Resource Centre for Content and Language Integrated Learning (CLIL), a teaching-learning methodology in schools that tries to address the issues related to multilingualism. This is a model that makes bilingual learning easier and better to equip young learners to grasp the content through language, thus enhancing both their knowledge base and language skills simultaneously."

This model encouraged and adopted by the European Union is suitable to multilingual India and can address the medium of instruction issues that exist across states. This project is planned in partnership with European and Indian universities such as - University of Castilla-La Mancha (Spain), University of Milano (Italy), University of Latvia (Latvia) and Symbiosis International University, Pune, Pondicherry University and Chitkara University. The project also has associate partners like Johannes Gutenberg University, Mainz (Germany), Italian University Line, Rosie Tanner Education Consultant.

This three-year project will develop CLIL model involving six languages to begin with - Kannada, Marathi, Punjabi, Tamil, Hindi and English. The project involves training young teachers in this bilingual teaching method which has its own techniques. If given the right impetus by the policy makers, this can change the language learning methods in the country and create a fair balance between learning English and native languages, according to Dr. Inamdar.

Earlier last week, the Department of European Studies (DES) was also selected for the prestigious Jean Monnet grant of €43200 towards a policy debate on higher education, Bologna process and internationalization of Indian universities.

The Department has been a part of Erasmus Mundus, Erasmus Plus, Jean Monnet module and Marie Curie programs, thus having almost all important programs encouraged and funded by EU. The Department also supports other institutions within Manipal in their grant applications.

Academically, DES is the only one in the country to offer an MA program in European Studies with a steady number of students graduating each year and shaping their careers in European affairs. The Centre for Foreign Languages that is a part of the Department offers Certificate Courses in German, French, Spanish, Italian, Japanese and Mandarin and has young native speakers as teachers thus adding to the diversity on campus. With all these programs and projects, the Department has emerged as a hub of European Studies activities in the country, says the Vice Chancellor proudly about his brain-child.

About Manipal University: 

Manipal University is synonymous with excellence in higher education. Over 28,000 students from 57 different nations live, learn and play in the sprawling University town, nestled on a plateau in Karnataka's Udupi district. It also has nearly 2500 faculty and almost 10000 other support and service staff, who cater to the various professional institutions in health sciences, engineering, management, communication and humanities, which dot the Wi-Fi-enabled campus.

For more information, visit: http://manipal.edu/mu.html.

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