Expert work is highly verbalized, often multilingual and multicultural. The strategic goals of the university integrate languages and communication into the university’s research, education and societal interaction, and thus also into the core skill set of members of the academic community.
— The language guidelines are linked with the university’s strategic objectives and touch upon all activities of the university, says Lauri Tolkki, director of the Language Centre.
—The university aims to be a pioneer of science communication, work in open interaction and to create education and learning that enables our graduates to work in changing and international environments.
—Good language and communication skills are essential worklife skills already today and in future the importance will grow further and we will need more plurilingual experts.
These Language Guidelines provide practical support for systematic choices relating to languages and communication taken by members of the academic community and the university’s units and different disciplines, which promote the realisation of the university’s strategy. Furthermore, the goal is to encourage flexible and active use of different languages in communication and interaction situations at the university. Multilingualism supports equality between members of the academic community and strengthens diversity and multiculturalism at the university.
With these Language Guidelines, the university also promotes, for its part, the diversification the language reserve of Finnish society.
Alongside Finnish, English is a key language of education, research and administration at the University of Eastern Finland. From the viewpoints of the university’s profile areas and its international collaboration in research and education, Russian is also a language of strategic importance.
