Music and history welcomed first-year students at NKUA

Youthful exuberance and melodies! This was the atmosphere at the first-ever welcome party thrown by the National and Kapodistrian University of Athens for its first-year students. All in the presence of Greece’s Deputy Minister of Education, Religious Affairs, and Sports, Ms Domna Michailidou. 

A few hours earlier...

The party was preceeded by an awarding ceremony at the ‘Propylaea’, the University’s iconic main building. The candidates who excelled in the national exams for admission to Greece’s Higher Educational Institutions and achieved the higher scores to enter each NKUA Department were officially congratulated. 

The Rector of NKUA, Professor Gerasimos Siasos, heartily welcomed the new students as fellow members of the University’s academic community:

This day has a special significance. Your admission to our University marks the beginning of a new cycle in your life, one filled with challenges, new experiences, hard work, and many rewards. You are the highest-scoring entrants to the NKUA’s Departments because of your perseverance, dedication to goals, sense of fair play, and outstanding performance in the nationwide exams. Your decision to study with us at NKUA is truly an honour! In you we recognize and celebrate excellence, a virtue described by Aristotle as 'all those simple or challenging things we carry out as habits rather than acts'. We also recognize and celebrate all our first-year students, who, through a combination of effort and performance, were admitted for study to the Departments of our University, concluded the Rector. 

A musical celebration

Soon after the ceremony, all the freshmen joined together for a lively, music-filled open celebration. In charge with the entertainment was Music Odyssey, a band of the NKUA’s Department of Music Studies, under the direction of Giannis Malafis, member of the Laboratory Teaching Staff at the Department, and with the friendly participation of Giannis Nikolaou from Lathrepivates.