The University of Oviedo and the financial entity Liberbank have signed an institutional collaboration agreement to promote teaching and research in the framework of the Campus of International Excellence. The Rector of the University, Vicente Gotor, and the territorial director of Enterprises in Asturias of Liberbank, Juan Ignacio Muñiz Rodríguez, signed this morning the agreement, by means of which the banking entity will contribute €843,000 until 2016.

The action that will be developed will aim at promoting teaching excellence and to stimulate the retention of talent with awards and grants for the students with the best academic records. The support that the banking entity has been providing to bilingual teaching in 16 Degrees of the University of Oviedo is now reinforced with this new collaboration agreement, which includes the creation of the Liberbank Program for Bilingualism of the University of Oviedo. This initiative will support courses to certify the linguistic competences of the teachers, the zero courses for new students who choose a bilingual pathway, and the formative offer of English for the teachers, the administrative staff and university students.

The agreement includes the call for the Liberbank Grants for the retention of young talent in Master's Degrees of the University of Oviedo. These grants will be available for students who have an excellent academic record and who commit themselves to carrying out a PhD at the University of Oviedo, therefore securing their talent. Each grant will amount to €10,000.

Another of the lines of collaboration seeks to promote the mobility of students through the Liberbank scholarships of the national SICUE program, which facilitates the mobility of Undergraduate students of the University of Oviedo towards another Spanish city.

Moreover, the agreement includes the Liberbank Awards for Research in Sports Medicine, for the Best Academic Record of the University of Oviedo and the Graduation Awards for the best academic records of the Degrees of Business Management and Administration, and Economics. In terms of the internationalization of research, the agreement will include scholarships aimed at foreign researchers to promote their collaboration with the University of Oviedo.