The Intercultural Skills Graduates and Businesses in Europe Need Today

It was the aim of the two surveys with European graduates and employers respectively to investigate the importance of intercultural competencies and skills for student employability and business success for European enterprise, now and in the future. The two surveys gave important insights into key factors that support the development of intercultural skills and competencies for graduates and employers across four countries and five different European regions, as well as five distinct universities. Our analysis shows clearly that one of the most important factors is the key role of experience with, and exposure to, people from different cultural backgrounds. Both students and employers scored much higher on important intercultural competencies such as cultural empathy, cognitive flexibility, open-mindedness, and tolerance for ambiguity, if they had frequent interactions with people from other cultures. This was also true for speaking at least one or more foreign languages at an intermediate or advanced level. Foreign language competence is an important intercultural skill not only for communication but also an important way in which cultural empathy and cognitive flexibility are learned and trained. In line with these results, both students and employers who had more exposure to different cultures also felt there was more need to pay attention to intercultural issues and support the development of intercultural skills than those with less experience of different cultures. Furthermore, our results from both the student and the employer surveys seem to reflect differences between more urban/metropolitan centres and more rural areas with smaller towns. London and Bursa are the two largest cities and the most metropolitan areas in our sample with a more multicultural population, whereas Worcester and Leuven are both smaller cities and the regions with the least ethnic diversity. Halmstad falls somewhere in between with a similar size and ethnic composition of the city and region as Worcester and Leuven, but the university itself has a very multicultural and mature student body that is very similar to LSBU in central London. While we cannot directly influence these regional differences in urbanisation and multiculturalism it is certainly important to be aware of them

The Intercultural Skills Graduates and Businesses in Europe Need Today

This ERASMUS+ funded project, “Developing the cross-cultural skills of graduates in response to the needs of European enterprise”, is developed in response to recent research highlighting the importance of intercultural competencies for graduates wanting to work in Europe, the employers’ needs, and the intercultural competencies and skills higher education institutions provide. This project aims to develop the intercultural competencies of graduates in the EU by enhancing the quality and relevance of their knowledge and skills to enable them to be active professionals in the European working environment. Five Higher Education Institutions have participated in this study: University of Worcester (Project lead, UK), London South Bank University (UK), UC Leuven-Limburg (Belgium), Halmstad University (Sweden), and Bursa Uludağ University (Turkey). The diversity of these partners, their respective regional and national contexts, and their experience in working together with regional businesses are central to achieve the project aims. As the first output of the project, this report presents results based on two types of analysis methods and data collected from four European countries (UK, Sweden, Belgium, and Turkey). Firstly, two surveys and the quantitative analysis of data collected from 585 student surveys responses and 403 employer survey responses and secondly, on an analysis of qualitative data collected through 50 interviews with employees in European organizations and 50 interviews with students studying in European universities

Cross-cultural Competencies and Skills Development Training Manual

This training manual has been developed as the third output of the ERASMUS+ funded project, “Developing the cross-cultural skills of graduates in response to the needs of European enterprise”. The manual comes as a materialization of the research conducted during this project aimed to support academics, trainers, and managers in facilitating the learning of intercultural skills necessary for graduates who want to work in the modern business environment in Europe. Five Higher Education Institutions have participated in this project: University of Worcester (Project lead- UK), London South Bank University (UK), UC Leuven-Limburg (Belgium), Halmstad University (Sweden), and Bursa Uludağ University (Turkey). The diversity of these partners and staff members involved in the project, their respective regional and national contexts, and their experience in working together with regional businesses were central to developing a robust manual which can help both in the academic and different industry sectors. This manual builds on the previous two outputs of this project; the Intercultural Skills for Graduates and Businesses needs in Europe Today Report and the Intercultural Competencies and Skills Development Toolkit. The Intercultural Competencies and Skills Development Toolkit includes twenty case studies, comprising ten written cases studies, five narrated case studies, and five video case studies. All of the case studies explore at least one of the intercultural skills identified as important in the Intercultural Skills for Graduates and Businesses needs in Europe Today Report. This training manual explains which intercultural skills and business issues each case study seeks to explore and develop from both a theoretical and an applied business perspective. This provides guidance as when to utilise each of the case studies in education and training. The second part of the training manual provides guidance in the form of teaching notes as to how the case studies can be applied in classrooms and workplaces to maximise learning and suggested answers

Genomic and Functional Overlap between Somatic and Germline Chromosomal Rearrangements

Contains fulltext : 139109.pdf (publisher's version ) (Open Access)Genomic rearrangements are a common cause of human congenital abnormalities. However, their origin and consequences are poorly understood. We performed molecular analysis of two patients with congenital disease who carried de novo genomic rearrangements. We found that the rearrangements in both patients hit genes that are recurrently rearranged in cancer (ETV1, FOXP1, and microRNA cluster C19MC) and drive formation of fusion genes similar to those described in cancer. Subsequent analysis of a large set of 552 de novo germline genomic rearrangements underlying congenital disorders revealed enrichment for genes rearranged in cancer and overlap with somatic cancer breakpoints. Breakpoints of common (inherited) germline structural variations also overlap with cancer breakpoints but are depleted for cancer genes. We propose that the same genomic positions are prone to genomic rearrangements in germline and soma but that timing and context of breakage determines whether developmental defects or cancer are promoted