On 22nd of February, The Technical University of Civil Engineering Bucharest organized an institutional Welcome Day at the beginning of the Spring Semester for all the EU-CONEXUS students registered to the UTCB Minor courses. Around 100 EU-CONEXUS students, teachers and university staff were present to this event, contributing to the EU-CONEXUS community’s growth.
The event started with a warm and inspirational “Welcome” from the UTCB Rector, Mr. Radu Văcăreanu, thanking the students who have enrolled to the EU-CONEXUS Minor Programmes, assuring them that the Technical University of Civil Engineering Bucharest will do its best to offer meaningful experiences to all the EU-CONEXUS Minor students, during this adventure.
The EU-CONEXUS students were also welcomed by the Minor Academic Coordinator, Prof. Alexandru Aldea, by the Faculty of Engineering in Foreign Languages Dean, Prof. Țăpuși Daniela and by all the UTCB Minor Courses Coordinators, enhancing the transparency and communication within EU-CONEXUS.
The second part of the event consisted in activities organized by the UTCB students for their EU-CONEXUS colleagues. They started with an activity designed to identify the values that bring us together in this alliance and it was meeaningful to find out that “friendship” it’s a common value. Students from different universities received the challenge to translate this value in their language: Maeva from La Rochelle University helped us with “amitié”; Natalia from Valencia University translated in Spanish “amistad”; Dragoș from UTCB noted in romanian as well “prietenie”, another UTCB international student told us the word in Turkish “Arkadaşlık“; Renato translated in Croatian as well “prijateljstvo” and Efstathia from Athens completed the activity with “Filia”or “φιλία” using the Greek alphabet.
The EU-CONEXUS students had the chance to meet their UTCB Buddies presented by the UTCB Representatives in Students Board: Raluca Neagoe and Marinoiu Marian. Each UTCB Buddy has a different role: Cristina Copoiu will act as a Student Guide for UTCB, Alin Dorobanțu will be a UTCB Buddy for Social and Cultural life in Bucharest and Dragoș Diaconu will be the Fun Activities’ Organizer Buddy.
UTCB will also collaborate with the Erasmus Student Network ASE-Bucharest in order to prepare events and activities for the EU-CONEXUS Minor Students, that’s why we invited an ESN Representative – Ayberk Yavuz to present this organization and the events prepared for the international students.
The last part of the event was designed by the UTCB students as a quiz discovering interesting cultural things about Romania from different perspectives. Students got to know romanian history, gastronomy, geography and economy through an interactive quiz celebrated with prizes for international students.
The UTCB Welcome Day ended with a group photo surprising the beautiful atmosphere and the good vibes of the participants. Hopefully, this event will contribute to the development of a solid and multicultural EU-CONEXUS community.