TSU became a member of the Francophone University Agency (AUF), an organization dedicated to supporting vocational training, higher education, and research. For TSU students and staff, university membership in the agency provides an opportunity to receive grant support for internships and research. Also, with the assistance of the AUF, TSU will create a French language center.
The Francophone University Agency was created over 50 years ago and unites more than 990 higher educational and research institutions from 118 countries. Its mission is to contribute to the construction and consolidation of the scientific space in French. It supports French cultural and linguistic diversity, rights and democracies, and environmental protection and sustainable development. The agency also provides a mobility program for students, researchers, and teachers.
- I'm sure that your university will make a significant contribution to the development of the AUF priorities, - said AUF President Sorin Mihai Cimpeanu. - Your students and teachers can apply for participation in competitions, in particular, scholarships on academic mobility. Your university also can take advantage of the AUF's educational resources.
Under the collaboration, TSU will create a Center for the Study of the French Language. Also, TSU students and teachers will have access to courses hosted on the AUF platform, including double-degree programs with universities in the agency.
Among the member universities are top universities in France, Canada, and Switzerland, for example, McGill University (Canada, QS 35), Ecole Polytechnique (France, QS 60), Sorbonne University (France, QS 77), and University of Geneva (Switzerland, QS 110 )
- The Francophone University Agency was created in the early 1960s - in a very bright, although difficult, period for French universities. French culture has actively positioned itself as an alternative, and now they are positioning themselves that way, believing that it is they, the French, who are adherents of real democracy without trying to be a "world gendarme." Moreover, the Francophone organization appeared not on the initiative of the French, but on the initiative of representatives of several countries that were French colonies, says Artyom Rykun, TSU Vice-Rector for International Affairs. - Now universities in France are in a more difficult situation, including because they lose to their own higher engineering schools[OU1] that accept students almost without exams. By the way, almost half of TSU partners are just higher engineering schools.
To date, 193 students are studying French at TSU. Most of them study linguistics, at the Faculty of Historical and Political Studies, the Faculty of Physics, and the Institute of Economics and Management. The university has 11 teachers of the French language, and another 12 people are scientists and teachers from France.
[OU1]if you do it the other way it means that AUF accepts without exams
