The Erasmus Welcome Week, organised by the Vice-Rector's Office for Internationalization and Postgraduate Studies via La Casa de las Lenguas, started this morning in the Campus of El Milán with the presentation of the activities with the presence of more than a hundred foreign students.

The Vice-Rector for Internationalization and Postgraduate Students, Covadonga Betegón, the Director of the Internationalization Office, Leticia Santos, and the Director of La Casa de las Lenguas, Marta Mateo were in charge of welcoming the students, who throughout this week will take part in different integration activities at the University and others that approach them to the social reality and customs of Asturias.

Covadonga Betegón emphasized that the Vice-Rector's Office and the University "are available to any problem you might have" and wished them a happy stay in the Asturian academic institution.

The University of Oviedo will receive this year around 500 Erasmus students from different European countries. German, Italian, French and English students are the most common ones among the students arriving in Oviedo, as Leticia Santos stressed and who also highlighted an important increase in the number of students from countries such as Poland and Turkey.

On the other hand, more than 600 students from the University of Oviedo will study abroad thanks to the Erasmus program, an increase of 10% with respect to last year's figures. The number of places and the variety of centres has been substantially increased this year thanks to the signing of 90 new agreements with more than twenty European universities.

The international expansion that the University of Oviedo has promoted in the last few years has caused an important increase in student mobilities, which complement their training with a stay abroad. Around 2,000 students sat this year the language tests to apply for a Erasmus grant.

The Polytechnic School of Engineering of Gijón, the Faculty of Economics and Business, the Faculty of Law and the Faculty of Philosophy and Letters are the centres with the highest number of sent and received Erasmus students this year.

Apart from the guidance activities of the Erasmus Welcome Week, they also put in motion the A-DUO and Tandem programs, two initiatives that promote the relationships between students from the University of Oviedo and the international students to support new students and improve the language level of both.