This is a project for higher education student and staff mobility between Programme Countries and Partner Countries. Please consult the website of the organisation to obtain additional details.

MEF University (MEF) is a non-profit, endowment-supported state-recognised university in Istanbul, Turkey, established in 2012 by Dr. İbrahim Arıkan Educational and Scientific Research Support Foundation. MEF opened for teaching in 2014 with the mission of graduating internationally competitive forward-thinking students and bringing together leading research-oriented scholars who will make globally significant contributions to science and technology, and their professional fields. MEF encompassed five faculties and two graduate schools, has close to 200 academic staff, and has grown in six years to an institution with around 4000 students in 15 first cycle programmes and ten second cycle programmes. MEF is known for its international outlook, high academic standards, dynamic and accessible management, and for responding to the requirements of the current generation with state-of-the-art academic programs and innovative technology-enhanced student-centred teaching methods. The Erasmus+ programme has a central role in MEF’s overall institutional strategy for internationalisation and excellence. We reaffirm our firm adherence to the principles of Erasmus Charter and fully endorse the principles of non-discrimination, transparency and full and equitable access to participants from all backgrounds, all of which are founding values of MEF University.The project at hand was MEF University's fourth KA103 project for individual mobility of learners and staff. We have now reached the maturity to include all categories of mobilities; this was a first project that also included inbound staff for teaching and training. We were able to double the number of participants for study mobility, from 12 to 24, and quadruple the number of participants in student mobility for traineeship, from 7 to 29, from what was planned in the grant agreement. This we accomplished by budget transfers from staff teaching and training mobility and OS towards student mobilities and limiting the grant period of traineeships to two months. We also received additional funding pursuant to our interim report. Still, our student mobilities also included 20 zero-grant participants. The budget transfers were made possible by low number of applicants to staff mobility, we provide the mobility grants to all of those who applied. Our encouragement to staff mobility has not faltered and we have instituted linguistic preparation to administrative staff to make it more wide-spread across different units. The number of staff mobilities for teaching falls below the grant agreement but this is partially due to the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic; we had additional four mobilities planned but they had to be deferred under the circumstances. The same had a serious impact for student mobilities, especially summer 2020 traineeships and academic year 2020-2021 study mobilities. There was a 12-month extension of the project due to COVID-19 but in the academic year 2020-2021 our mobility activities were minimal. The pandemic once more reminded of the importance of readiness for crises-management. From a qualitative point of view, the participant report feedback on ECHE compliance and related issues shows very high levels of satisfaction and we will carry on with our current practices and procedures. The impact has not only been the competences and skills the participants have earned during their mobilities, but we evidence longer-term benefits such as past student participants gained acceptances to graduate study at major European universities or permanent employment abroad, and staff training mobilities producing new projects under other action lines of Erasmus+, some of them already granted.

This action supports physical and blended mobility of higher education students and staff from/to third countries not associated to Erasmus+. Students in all study fields and cycles can take part in a study period or traineeship abroad. Higher education teaching and administrative staff can take part in professional development activities abroad, as well as staff from the field of work in order to teach and train students or staff at higher education institutions.

MEF University opened for teaching in 2014, thus 2015 was the first year we benefitted from Erasmus+ mobility programs. Our budget request, as well as the approved budget, were modest, as we had a low number of students who would qualify for mobility. We ended up sending one student to study mobility and four students to traineeship mobility. Even these low numbers considerably increased the visibility of Erasmus+ program among our student body and now after two years, we have over 50 applicants for the next academic year. We were particularly pleased with the traineeship mobility and to highlight that we organized an information session for the next cohort of prospective traineeship students with four students who did their in summer 2016, and managed to quadrable the number of traineeship students in the subsequent project cycle. In the 2015 project, we also emphasized staff mobility and found it a good way to disseminate information about Erasmus+ and increase awareness among our staff. We had 5 faculty members participating in teaching mobility and one administrative staff in training mobility. Their experiences were very positive and we hope to continue with similar numbers in the future years.

This is a higher education student and staff mobility project, please consult the website of the organisation to obtain additional details.