Think global, be local - GSA President guest blog

From coordinating trips to Newcastle, to organizing Karaoke nights, the GSA is very keen to involve international students in the York experience from the get-go. As GSA President, I really enjoy meeting incoming students and this year's Postgraduate Welcome and International Week were perfect opportunities to brush up on my language skills and to interact with as many international students as possible. Note however, that I can still only say kangaroo in Chinese - dai shu.

Thinking back on that first week of term, I would just like to say thank you to all of the amazing students that I met and had the chance to speak to. I know that integration is sometimes difficult and it is because of this that I hope that your first week here was perceived as welcoming. The University and the GSA have the particular advantage of being truly global in their approach to students and their needs but also incredibly local in the interactions they value. So, from one York student to another, there is no other secret to being here, other than "think global, be local". We encourage you to find who you are and to grow and develop here - don't miss the chance, because I am sure you will not find a second community as interested in your well being as this one.

And because well being cannot miss out on fun and new exciting opportunities: come to the GSA trips to Edinburgh and Oxford, engage in the programmes advertised by the International Relations Office and keep an eye out for new ISA events. And, should you find yourself in trouble - write me or get in touch with International Student Support - we are all here to make your experience as rewarding as you want it to be. I hope you all have a good year and I hope to speak to more of you in the future.

Karin Diaconu, GSA President

The President chairs the GSA Executive Committee, has overall responsibility for co-ordinating all its activities, and represents students on specific university committees, including University Council, Senate and Court.  In all of these capacities he or she acts as the chief spokesperson for all students.

Inspirational India

The energy and ideas of partners in India inspired the York staff who visited last week.  Our plans for collaboration now range from joint seminars in bioengineering with IIT Delhi to a workshop on post-colonial scholarship in Britain and India with Delhi University.  Having a delegation of academics from widely different areas led to an interesting cross-fertilisation of ideas.  Staff from Computer Science, Electronics, Biology, Art History and English Literature forged a good working group, ably representing York and its work to leading universities and institutes in Delhi and Bangalore.

India gets a lot right in creating an environment for scholarship.  The campuses we visited were oases from the craziness of traffic and turmoil outside, and there is a great tradition of guest houses for visiting faculty – from within India or from around the world.  We can learn from this - if we take the time to measure the benefits, which are long-term.  Time spent on research leave or as a working visiting scholar on another campus, can yield huge advantages for scientific, scholarly advances.  Just having time to think is a difficult thing to achieve in the frenetic places that UK universities have become.

We also met legions of alumni in India, many from the world-famous Centre for Conservation Studies, housed in the historic King’s Manor in the centre of the city of York.  They were mainly students from the 1980s and 90s and now occupy interesting and senior positions in India’s heritage management industry, including the head of conservation at the Golden Temple in Amritsar.  It just goes to show what an inspiring time at university can lead to.

Hilary Layton, Director of Internationalisation

Vive la Canada!

Last week we had the pleasure of receiving a visit by Dr Doug Owram, Deputy Vice Chancellor of the University of British Columbia (UBC) and Principal of the UBC Okanagan campus. UBC has more than 40,000 students, 9,000 faculty and staff, and places 22nd in the THE world rankings. Okanagan is their relatively new research-intensive campus based midway between Vancouver and Calgary. 

This link started over a year ago with the Okanagan Economic Development Commission who were interested in exploring connections between regional companies with York Science Park. This developed into discussions with UBC Okanagan about possible areas for research and student exchange links.

Dr Owram, who was welcomed to the University by Professor Trevor Sheldon, our Deputy Vice Chancellor, met a range of Departments including Chemistry, Biology, Health Sciences, Theatre, Film and Television, York Management School and the Humanities Research Centre. From the discussions held it was clear there was much common interest and we’ll now be working on specific collaboration agreements.

We already have good links with a number of other Canadian universities including the University of Alberta, York University, and the University of Toronto and with this partnership we are looking forward to expanding these alliances further.

Harriet Cross, International Relations Officer

Santander Universities Funding

Last month I attended a signing ceremony to launch a three year, £198,000 funding agreement between Santander and the University of York. The agreement was signed by our Vice-Chancellor Professor Brian Cantor and the Chairman of Santander UK Lord Terry Burns.

This signing ceremony was the easy part. We are now working out how exactly to allocate and manage the scholarships and awards for students and staff mobility that this funding will provide. We will certainly want to focus on building links in Brazil and Argentina, but the Santander Universities Network also covers a wide range of other countries including the US and China so this will be an opportunity to extend and deepen already existing partnerships.

We do already run a mobility funding scheme, although this is currently limited to a network of 12 overseas institutions. This Friday is the closing date for applications to the Worldwide Universities Network Research Mobility Programme which allows staff and postgraduate students to apply for funding to visit overseas partners in the Worldwide Universities Network. In the last year we have funded visits to the University of Cape Town; University of Washington, Seattle; University of Wisconsin, Madison; Nanjing University (China); University of Western Australia; and the University of Sydney. The feedback from awardees is always incredibly positive, so I’m looking forward to giving out some good news to successful applicants in a few weeks time.

Harriet Cross, International Relations Officer