Fleming College

Students in Fleming College’s Forestry program will visit Italy, Hungary, and Austria in April as part of a new exchange agreement between colleges in Canada and the European Union.A group of at least nine students and one faculty member will leave for Venice, Italy on April 23. They will spend time in the Alps at a forestry research station before heading to Austria and then Hungary.Within the new exchange program students can visit Europe for as little as three weeks and as long as a semester (four months), says Gerald Guenkel, Coordinator of the Forestry program at Frost Campus. The host institutions are the University of West Hungary, Sopron, Hungary and the University of Padua, Legnaro, Italy“These exchanges will expose our students to a variety of educational and cultural experiences that are indispensable in today’s world of globalization. It really gives students an advantage in the workplace. At the same time, it allows Fleming to create valuable educational partnerships with other Canadian colleges as well as postsecondary institutions in Europe,” says Mr. Guenkel.Students from Forestry programs at the University of West Hungary and the University of Padua will be eligible to travel to Canada to attend Fleming College, Malaspina University-College in British Columbia or the University of Moncton in New Brunswick.While on exchange, students will take Forestry courses at the institution they are visiting. The first of these visits to Fleming will take place in September at the Forestry program’s annual field camp where ten students from Italy will attend.The exchange agreement is a three-year initiative and is part of the Canada-European Union Program for Partnership in Higher Education. The framework of the agreement is flexible to ensure students are not in any way restricted from taking the exchange opportunities, says Mr. Guenkel. There is federal funding for the program – while Canadian students pay $1,000 to go on the exchange, the federal government will fund an additional $2,000 for the trip. Linda Skilton, Dean of the School of Environmental and Natural Resource Sciences, says the exchange is part of an overall effort at the campus to engage in more international opportunities.“With the increasing internationalization of the natural resources and environmental sector in which the students will be working, cross-cultural competencies are now viewed as essential. International internships are much valued by employers,” said Ms. Skilton.“From the European perspective, where international student mobility is widely promoted, there is also a growing interest in Canadian postsecondary education models especially the community college approach to technical training and applied learning."