OU research celebrates continuation of Santander Universities agreement to 2020

The OU and Santander celebrated their 10 year relationship and its extension to 2020 this week (26 July) at the OU’s Milton Keynes campus.

The Santander Universities agreement will provide a further £210,000 to continue to set up scholarships for academics and students from higher education institutions in countries within Santander’s network to study at The Open University and participate in its International Fellowship Programme.

The funding supports the following awards:

• The Research and Scholarship Awards provides support for Postgraduate Research Students and academic and research staff to further their studies/research at a Santander partner institution within the UK or overseas. These awards are up to £5,000 each.
• The Mobility Awards are available to research students/staff to cover travel and subsistence costs for the purpose of creating/developing research collaborations with Santander partner institution within the UK or overseas. These awards are up to £3,000 each.
• The Student Entrepreneurship Competition is open to current postgraduate and undergraduate students, and those graduated within the previous two years. £20,000 is allocated from the Santander funding to cover the cash prizes and the costs associated with running the competition.

Funding received through the agreement over the last 10 years, has led to some interesting research projects and opened up employment opportunities for those involved.

A few projects the awards are helping with are protecting floodplain meadows, recycling carbon, exploring how children can learn to code and protecting people from volcanic eruptions.

Speaking at the celebration, Diana Stammers, OU Director Academic Strategy, said:

“Through this financial support we have been able to send our academic and research staff and research students all across the world in pursuit of sharing their research and undertaking knowledge exchange with colleagues.

In 2016/17 this funding has enabled collaborations between the OU and other academic institutions in Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Germany, Poland, Portugal, Russia, Spain, Uruguay, the UK and the USA.”

Find out more about Santander Universities scheme.