Background Information on FINELC

How FINELC came into being

In 2001 the Finnish language centres created a common network, primarily in order to implement the national Virtual Language Centre project. The issue of a national association and full membership of CercleS had been on the agenda for a couple of years, but it was not until 2003 that the matter was given real priority. That same year, the Network's regulations were modified into statutes, and the reshaped Network was to be called FINELC (from FInnish NEtwork of Language Centres). Language and communication skills have always been highly esteemed in Finnish society and in our educational system, and such skills, needed in academic and professional fields, are by tradition a well-established part of all Finnish university degrees. A proof of this is our LC network, which as a matter of fact, dates back to the 1970s.

The Finnish LCs entered a new phase in September 2004, when Network was accepted by the CercleS General Meeting in Bratislava as a full member of CercleS. The 17 university LCs that constitute FINELC were introduced in Bulletin 18. Most of the centres' mother universities are multidisciplinary (10), others represent economics (3) or technology (3), while the Defence College is in a category of its own. The LCs, as they stand today, have a well-established and independent position in the university administration, similar to that of the faculties. The staff, whether they are teachers, administrators or other non-teaching experts, usually hold permanent full-time posts. The LCs have conducted several joint projects, e.g. innovative teaching experiments, and pursued research on teaching and learning in accordance with the objectives set forth in the strategies of the language centres. Accordingly, in recent years the LCs have also qualified as research institutes.

Pirkko Forsman-Svensson