The Connect4Innovation: UK-Turkey Higher Education Institutional Partnership Fund is a new grant scheme which supports and enables institutional partnerships between universities from the UK and Turkey. We want to create new links, innovative and sustainable partnerships through joint activities and projects to improve graduate outcomes.
Enhancing internationalisation, institutional partnerships, and inclusion will support higher education institutions to improve quality and thus increase the skills and knowledge, which are essential for their students’ successful careers in a rapidly changing workplace.
We are inviting universities in Turkey and the UK to submit joint applications for projects which focus on improving graduate outcomes.
We are aiming to support projects which offer a clearly articulated benefit for developing the ‘global graduate’ who can consider different perspectives, approaches challenges with flexible thinking and demonstrates a willingness to challenge stereotypes.
In order to align graduate outcomes with industry or social needs, projects should also include a third partner such as an NGO, development agency, chamber of commerce, organised industry zone or municipality. Industry requires future employees to have specific skillsets to innovate and drive technological advances, so we are looking for applications which go beyond research projects, and are both innovative and practical.
Primary themes
We welcome project applications with the following primary themes:
- Creating new and innovative career pathways and career development programmes for academics, professional staff, students and graduates including:
- Aligning skill sets of students and graduates with industry needs.
- Improving teaching skills including pedagogy, curriculum and/or assessment capabilities of academics.
- Developing the capacity of internationalisation, student affairs and career counselling professionals.
- Strengthening governance, leadership, quality assurance and management in institutions.
- Climate change, green universities and green careers with a clear impact on graduates’ employability skills, in line with the United Nations’ priority themes.