Hello and welcome to our 19th International Day.

So we started this nearly 20 years ago and this shows how important internationalization

is for you, for us as a university, as a school of business, economics and society.

And therefore I'm glad that so many of you came to this welcome information session this afternoon.

My name is Dirk Kolkbrugge. For those of you who don't know me, I'm the Dean of International Affairs

and together with Jörg Reisner, the head of the International Office, and Heidem Kukka, also from our International Office,

we would like to give you some detailed information about the process, how to go broad, how to transfer credits,

and of course also we try to answer all the questions that you have.

So whenever something is unclear, please don't hesitate to ask questions.

And of course during the day and in the afternoon and also outside you'll see that there are a lot of people

and we will have around 40-50 sessions about different regions, different partner universities, funding,

learning agreements, transfer of credits and so on.

So there's a lot of information about this process going abroad, starting at one of our partner universities.

In the beginning I would like to give you some very general information and I would like to generally motivate you,

at least considering going abroad for one semester or more.

And first of all, and most importantly, it's not only about studying, it's really about making international intercultural experience.

And of course this is more important today than ever.

If you start your career here in one of the local companies in the region or in any company in the world,

it's very likely that this company has operations in other countries and that you will use other languages,

that you will interact with customers, with colleagues, with different cultural backgrounds and so on.

And the best way to prepare yourself for a career in an international company is to go abroad

and spend some month at least in another country.

So it's about foreign language skills, it's about international intercultural experience.

It's also about clarification of your professional perspective,

because one outcome of your study stay abroad could also be that you decide,

hey, this is something I want to do later in my professional career or this is something I definitely don't want to do.

But this could also be very helpful.

So orientation, professional orientation is also very important.

The number of job offers.

It's very likely that you will get more and more attractive job offers later when you have some international experience.

Higher starting salaries, so international experience is also valued in terms of salary by companies.

And finally, of course, some of you have to go abroad.

For those enrolled in our bachelor programs in international economic studies and international business studies,

at least one semester abroad is mandatory.

But I hope that many of you do not only go abroad because it's mandatory, but because you want to and because you like to.

And that's, of course, also very relevant.

It's optional for all other programs.

And by the way, you can earn up to 60 credits abroad.

Now, so you can also spend more than one semester, of course, depending on availability of spots.

But generally up to 60 credits can be can be earned abroad, both in bachelor programs and in master programs.

Any idea what this globe illustrates?

Have you ever visited the German National Museum here in Nuremberg?

This is the oldest globe, the oldest, at least still existing globe, and it's here in Nuremberg.

And it means that for companies and for students here in Nuremberg, internationalization is not a topic that came up,

let's say, in the last couple of years.

But this was a topic, an important topic for many rooms here in Nuremberg already in the Middle Ages.

And we try to continue this and assist you and help you as faculty and as a school generally in this in this entire process as much as we can.

And this is also reflected in our rankings.

You may be aware of rankings, for instance, and this is about international orientation.

And you can see there are not many universities in Germany that have this green light here,