Manipal University bags EU project in higher education

Manipal University has bagged the prestigious Capacity Building project in Higher Education offered by the European Union under the Erasmus Plus programme.

The three-year project carries a grant of EUR 564178 (about Rs 4 crore) to develop a Centre for Content and Language Integrated Learning (CLIL), a teaching-learning methodology in schools to address the issues related to multilingualism.

The CLIL model involves six languages – Kannada, Marathi, Punjabi, Tamil, Hindi and English – to begin with.

Reacting to the achievement, Dr H Vinod Bhat, Vice Chancellor, Manipal University said, “It is a matter of pride to bag the grant as we are the only one in India to receive this funding as a lead applicant. This is the largest grant for Humanities and Social Sciences in Manipal University.”

Manipal University had found a place in the final list of 147 projects from among 736 applications from all over the world. Incidentally, it was the only university from India in the final list.

Head of the Department of European Studies, Dr Neeta Inamdar, who developed the application, said the project was about establishing a Resource Centre for Content and Language Integrated Learning (CLIL), a teaching-learning methodology in schools that tries to address the issues related to multilingualism.
 “This is a model that makes bilingual learning easier and better to equip young learners to grasp the content through language thus enhancing both their knowledge base and language skills simultaneously. This model, encouraged and adopted by the European Union, is suitable to multilingual setup of India and can address the medium of instruction issues that exist across states,” she stated.

The project involves training young teachers in this bilingual teaching method, which has its own techniques. If given the right impetus by the policy makers, this can change the language learning methods in the country and create a balance between learning English and native languages, according to Dr Inamdar.

This project is planned in partnership with European and Indian universities such as University of Castilla-La Mancha (Spain), University of Milano (Italy), University of Latvia (Latvia) and Symbiosis International University, Pune, Pondicherry University and Chitkara University. The project also has associate partners like Johannes Gutenberg University, Mainz (Germany), Italian University Line, Rosie Tanner Education Consultant.

Academically, the Department of European Studies is the only one in the country to offer an MA programme in European Studies. The Centre for Foreign Languages, a part of the Department offers Certificate Courses in German, French, Spanish, Italian, Japanese and Mandarin.

“With all these programmes and projects, the Department has emerged as a hub of European Studies activities in the country,” said Dr Vinod Bhat.