“Oh? Is there such an intersection?” you wonder.

Admittedly, it may sound counter-intuitive. ‘Regional’ and ‘international’ sound like different scales. Yet, while that may be true, the South-Eastern Finland University of Applied Sciences (Xamk) has strategic objectives at both of those levels.

We want and need to demonstrate our impact on the economic, social and ecological development of the regions of Etelä-Savo and Kymenlaakso, in which we operate.

We also want to “internationalise”. Until I’ve had a chat with our internationalisation team to retrieve a proper definition, I’m going to interpret this as meaning that we want to become a more internationally networked and recognised institution.

‘International’ in Education and RDI

Foreign students make up a significant part of the population at our campuses and we have been actively recruiting students from abroad for many years.

Through our online Pulse and Edufication learning platforms we are already offering courses to an international audience over the internet.

Having joined the European Ingenium network of universities and universities of applied sciences, we can now develop new study paths with international exchanges.

Some of the Research, Development and Innovation (RDI) activities that we carry out at our 11 research units, together with commercial partners, other research entities and the public sector, are internationally top-notch.

Taking our regional impact abroad

While the objective is always to have a positive regional impact, the quality of our methods and indeed its output may have relevance to stakeholders well beyond Finland.

By demonstrating the international relevance of the regional impact of our RDI, we can attract more international collaboration partners, customers, and investors to our research. This could create a self-reinforcing growth loop.

Therefore, if we want to serve both our strategic objectives of regional impact and internationalisation, we should not only look at our regional activities from a regional perspective, but also through the eyes of an international audience of potential stakeholders and partners.

But… how does that impact us?

What does this mean for the kind of RDI activities we want to prioritise? How do we incorporate internationalisation in our projects? How do we communicate our relevance to international audiences? How do we develop networks and audiences that can outlive the lifespan of our projects?

I’d love to have that discussion with anyone who has a view on these questions, both inside and outside of Xamk. Any thoughts? Please, leave a comment, amplify this post on your own channels, and/or ping me at jos.schuurmans@xamk.fi.