CIVIS Student Council and Ambassadors meet at the University of Bucharest
On 15 & 16 September 2022, members of the CIVIS Student Council and CIVIS Ambassadors gathered at the University of Bucharest. The meeting was an opportunity for these student representatives to plan their future work and collaboration. It also marked the formal handover of the Presidency of the CIVIS Student Council to Angelo Petre, a Master's student at the University of Bucharest.
CIVIS: a European University Alliance build hand in hand with its students
CIVIS offers students two ways to contribute to the development of our Alliance. The CIVIS Student Council is the consultative body for students, representing the interests of students from all member universities in the governance structures of the CIVIS Alliance. Each university is represented by 4 students from different levels of study, giving all groups a say in how our Alliance is managed. CIVIS Ambassadors, on the other hand, promote CIVIS activities and opportunities to students at their university and welcome arrivals from across the Alliance. Member universities are currently recruiting Ambassadors for the new academic year.
The event brought together about 30 students representing the 10 current member universities of the CIVIS Alliance. Students representing the University of Lausanne, which will join the Alliance on 1 October, were also present. The meeting took place at the very end of our first round of Erasmus+ financing, marking the transition to our new financing period with a chance to identify the strengths and weaknesses of the activity of the Student Council so far. The agenda of the event included a series of meetings between CIVIS student representatives and students of the academic community from the University of Bucharest, out of the desire to streamline, through dialogue, the process of consolidating and co-creating the Civic University of the future.
Professor Marian Preda, PhD, Rector of the University of Bucharest, welcomed the students with a speech on the importance of the students' contribution to CIVIS: “I strongly believe that students are the most important stakeholder of our European Civic University, because every university must have students at its core: our educational activities are centered on you, the future of the university and society must be created and implemented by you, and I am convinced that the new elites will emerge from your generation. I am therefore glad that we can host this CIVIS event in which you are at the center of the debates”.
Handover of the leadership of the CIVIS Student Council
As of 1 October, Angelo Petre, Master's student at the Faculty of Geography of the University of Bucharest, will be the new president of the CIVIS Student Council. He was elected by his peers at the Global CIVIS Days in Athens in May.
Angelo is looking forward to getting to work, telling the Council that he “entered the faculty in 2019 and grew up with the Alliance, gradually understanding the infinite opportunities that this project offers to its students. And I am glad that, with taking over the new role, I am in a position from which I can encourage and support a more active involvement of the students in the mechanisms of creating the future of the Alliance,” said Angelo Petre.
Looking to the future
The event also brought to Bucharest members of the CIVIS Coordination Team at Aix-Marseille Université, who led a workshop about the Digital Campus, one of the future online tools dedicated to the CIVIS community.
“Now and here we are building the third stage of Europe's academic future, through these European Universities, and one of our challenges at the administrative level is to offer you a common space, where you can feel at home regardless of which CIVIS university you come from. Our main goal is for you to be CIVIS students and to have common tools, both physical and digital, in the future stage of our alliance project”, explained Prof. Sorin Costreie, Vice-Rector for University Networks and Public Relations of the University of Bucharest.
