The Erasmus University Rotterdam has today been selected by the European Commission’s Education, Audiovisual and Culture Executive Agency (EACEA) to lead a partnership of 11 universities, five from Europe and six from Latin America, in the framework of the Erasmus Mundus External Cooperation Window (ECW) focusing on the Latin America region.
The External Cooperation Window aims at mutual enrichment and better understanding between the European Union and Third-Countries. It is designed to foster cooperation between higher education institutions and the exchange of students and academic staff from EU Member States and Third-Countries through a mobility scheme addressing student and academic exchanges between Europe and the designated countries in Latin America for the purpose of studying, teaching, training and research.
The selected project, named ERACOL (Erasmus-Columbus 2013), focuses on the countries Colombia, Costa Rica, and Panama. The members of the consortium are among the world’s most renowned universities for research training in medicine and the health sciences. The mission we share is to train students in the field of health sciences to become committed health professionals, identify the determinants of health and disease, improve the efficiency of health services, and develop methods for acquiring and interpreting medical data.
The European members of the partnership are: Erasmus University Rotterdam’s Erasmus MC University Medical Center, The Netherlands, Karolinska Institutet, Stockholm, Sweden, Katholieke Universiteit Leuven, Belgium, Universitat Pompeu Fabra, Barcelona, Spain, University of Torino, Italy.
The Latin American members are: Universidad Autónoma de Centro América, San José, Costa Rica; Universidad de Costa Rica, Cartago, Atlántico, Costa Rica; Universidad de Panamá, Veraguas, Panamá; Universidad del Cauca, Popayán, Colombia; Universidad del Rosario, Bogotá, Colombia; Universidad Latina de Panamá, Ciudad de Panamá.
The consortium is dedicated to making a sustainable contribution to mutually enriching and improving understanding between the people of the European Union and Latin America. Health matters — to patients, their families and entire populations. It is for this reason that the project focuses on the medical sciences and all health-related fields of study. The combined research and training offerings are designed to build the capacities of those seeking a career as a researcher in medicine and the health sciences, wishing to combine research and clinical work, or to increase their eligibility for involvement in a PhD research project — in academia, the public sector or in industry. This includes the vulnerable groups, irrespective of gender, which would otherwise not have access to the level of teaching we can provide.
The detailed project description will be published on the Erasmus Mundus website. The mobility scheme addressing student and academic exchanges between Europe and the designated countries in Latin America (Colombia, Costa Rica, and Panama), will be announced on a dedicated website to be launched by the participating universities. Individual mobility will start at the latest by 1st September 2010 and be finished before 1st December 2013, provided that contracts have been signed.
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