Language skills in university scholarship programs

Elite Network of BavariaStephan Bedke

March 2014

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Elite Network of Bavariaabout 3000 members

1000 100 150Financial volume: 20 million € per year

Beate Lindner

Institution

Main objectives: Support of

promising talents Attracting best

scientists For the benefit of

the State of Bavaria

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Actions developed in coordination with other entities

Cooperation with various other educational institutions: German National Academic Foundation

(Studienstiftung des deutschen Volkes) Language schools in the target country

(UK, France, Italy, Portugal, Spain) and language courses in Arabic, Chinese, Japanese, Russian, Turkish

Academic partner of the Lindau Nobel Laureate Meeting etc.

Team Sprachraum at LMU Munich: Soft-skill seminars

Bavarian universitiesMax Weber-Program students at language school in Salamanca

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Strategies

International scholarship programs

Participation in scientific meetings, conferences etc. (Lindau Nobel Laureate Meeting, Get-together meetings, international science meetings (ESOF) ...)

Exposure to world-class research

Promotion of foreign language skills within the programs

“Networking” between researchers and scientists

Nobel laureate Robert Huber (Chemistry) with alumna Nadja Bertlef at Lindau Nobel Laureate Meeting 2013

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Results

Our programs attract students / young researchers from from all around the world Percentage of non-German scholarship

holders: 16,7% (despite Max Weber-Program)

Interaction between the scholarship holders across our five programs

High demand for language courses etc.

Essential need to be able to communicate in at least one lingua franca

Dan Shechtman – Israeli Nobel Laureate (Chemistry) at Lindau Nobel Laureate Meeting 2013 with international young researchers

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- Motivation is a decisive factor in successful second language acquisition.

- Meaningfulness of foreign language learning is self-evident for our students and young researchers.

- Motivation is inevitably very high.

Conclusions