The event also marks taking over the presidency of the CIVIS Student Council by Angelo Petre, UB master’s student
30 students, representing the 10 CIVIS member universities, are participating on September 15-16, 2022, at a new meeting of the CIVIS Global Student Council and Ambassadors. The event takes place in a hybrid format, in several rooms of the Rectorate of the University of Bucharest and online, on the Webex platform.
The main student representation structure within CIVIS member-universities, the CIVIS Student Council is the advisory body of students in the alliance, representing the interests of all students from the ten universities. At the same time, CIVIS Ambassadors have the mission of promoting the activities and objectives of the CIVIS Alliance among universities.
“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”, said Prof. Marian Preda, PhD, Rector of the University of Bucharest at the opening of the event.
The meeting brings together both representatives of the CIVIS Global Student Council and representatives of CIVIS Ambassadors from the 10 already member universities, but also, as observers, student representatives from the University of Lausanne (UNIL), which will join the alliance from October 1, 2022. The event also brings to Bucharest members of the administrative staff from Aix Marseille Université, who proposed a meeting on the subject of Digital Campus, one of the future online tools dedicated to the CIVIS community.
The meeting aims to mark the end of the CIVIS 1 project, by identifying the strengths and weaknesses of the activity of the GSC body and the harmonization of work guidelines, along with the establishment of new objectives and resolutions for the second stage of the project, CIVIS 2, which will start on October 1, 2022.
Thus, the agenda of the event includes 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.
“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.
Handover of the leadership of the CIVIS Student Council
The meeting in Bucharest also has the role of symbolically marking the assumption of the Presidency (Chair of Managing Committee) of the CIVIS Student Council by Angelo Petre, master’s student at the Faculty of Geography of the University of Bucharest, who will start in the new position on October 1, 2022.
“I am glad to host you at this event which aims to officially mark the end of the first part of the CIVIS project and set the foundation for the start of CIVIS 2 which will occur in October. I 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, the future president of the CIVIS Student Council.
Within this CIVIS Student Council, each university is represented by four students, from different levels of studies, with the aim of strengthening the links of communication and support between the governance of the CIVIS Alliance and the students at the member universities.
About CIVIS, the European Civic University
The European Civic University CIVIS is an academic alliance that brings together ten of the most important universities in Europe: Aix-Marseille Université, National and Kapodistrian University of Athens, University of Bucharest, Université Libre de Bruxelles, Universidad Autónoma de Madrid, Sapienza Università di Roma, Stockholm University, Eberhard Karls Universität Tübingen, University of Glasgow and Paris Lodron Universität Salzburg. CIVIS brings together a community of over 470,000 students and 68,000 employees, of which over 30,000 are academics and researchers.
The member universities of the CIVIS network undertake to implement the principles established by the Bologna process, in order to integrate into the process of creating a European higher education area. Thus, the European Civic University is taking shape as a space of responsible and innovative education, research, cultural exchanges and citizen action in Europe, from the Baltic Sea to the Mediterranean Sea, being always connected to everything that happens in the world, to the citizens and its institutions.
