University of Nebrija and ATU Meet in Tehran

Directorate of International Academic Cooperation -

On 22 April 2017, a delegation of top officials from the University of Nebrija (Spain) had a visit to ATU Vice-President for Research office.

A delegation of top officials from the University of Nebrija, consisting of Dr Juan Antonio Sanchez, Director of Academic Development and Marketing; Dr Saloumeh Yousefian, Head of Europe and Middle East Development; and Dr Ramon Valdez, Head of the International Relations Department visited ATU and discussed the possible grounds for cooperation with ATUs Vice-President for Research, Director of International Academic Cooperation, Director of Research Affairs, Head of the Office for Developing International Academic Cooperation, and Head of Spanish Department.

Dr Habib Honari, ATU Vice-President for Research, first introduced ATU and the participants. He then pointed to the role of the MoU that ATU has signed with six Spanish universities in developing ties with those institutes and introduced the holding of joint academic conferences and exchanging students as the main topics of the visit.

Dr Sanchez then introduced his university, saying, "Our university has about 7 thousand international students from 35 countries; it is divided into five faculties: Education and Languages; Social Science; Architecture and Engineering; Communication, and Health Science, plus a research centre for PhD students." Introducing their Language Centre, Dr Sanchez added that this Centre is active as an international language college offering Spanish courses to numerous foreign students. The Centre is also training Spanish teachers. The establishment of a branch of the Spanish Language Centre at ATU and establishing a Department of Persian Language at the University of Nebrija were the other suggestions that Dr Sanchez offered.

Dr Mandana Tishehyar, Director of ATU International Academic Cooperation, then elaborated on ATU's special potential in the field of Teaching Persian to Speakers of Other Languages (TPSOL), saying: "By now, ATU is the only Iranian university offering this degree programme and the graduates of this programme are being missioned abroad for teaching Persian. This year we have sent our TPSOL professors to Russia, China and South Korea." She added that ATU is also hosting many students from foreign universities, coming to spend short-term (one month to one term) courses. Last year, students from Spain, Turkey, Russia, China and South Korea attended Persian courses in ATU.