Hello guys,
As some of you know, I was in Budapest on the 24th and 25th June in the General Assembly of EMA representing Euro Aquae. Apart from me, there were two other alumni from Euro Aquae representing the chinese and japanese chapters: Baily and Keiko.
You can read a summary of the event on this link which I also posted on the group's wall:
http://www.em-a.eu/home/news/article/the-2011-ema-general-assembly-democracy-and-a-river-boat-cruise-in-budapest-by-rebecca-simon-ema.html?tx_ttnews%5BbackPid%5D=6&cHash=8db16d0c00On day one, the most important presentation and questions & answers session was, in my opinion, the one given by the EU representatives Edith Gesser and Jana Fiorito. They presented results, statistics and strategies of Erasmus Mundus programme and (tried to) answer many questions from students and alumni. Here I should point out that the issues we have on Euro Aquae (quality assurance, diplomas,course contents, mobility,et.) are common to many other master courses and the comission is aware of most of them and open to receive inputs.
There were also presentations from representatives of the Budapest Central European University, Tempus Foundation, Ministry of National Resources of Hungary, European research council, European Insitute of Innovation and Technology, EMA steering comittee and regional chapters as well as the candidates for president and vice-president of EMA. As you can imagine it was a really long day, but a good opportunity to get to know the structure and dimension of the association, to meet new people and network.
Day one ended with a beautiful boat trip on the Danube river, official dinner and a little party
The second day was also pretty busy, starting with EMA restructure proposals and voting. The proposals were related to the management of the association. There is a pdf document you can check on the link I pasted above.
On this second day participants could also take part of different professional networks (health and welfare, science and engineering, social sciences, etc.), where participants formed work groups to gather ideas on how to improve communication and propose actions to develop the networks.
I took part on Geomundus network -
http://geomundus.org. This network is organising a symposium of Geography, Earth and Environmental studies, which is free-of-charge conference organized by the students of the EM International Master's Program in Geospatial Techologies but is it open to every student/researcher who wishes to exchange knowledge and experiences in the field of 'geo'. Please refer to their webpage to get further info and do not doubt in sending papers/posters to participate.
I also participated in the Course representatives and the Latin American chapter forums. On this, I would like to mention again that the problems we face on Euro Aquae are not exceptions and the association is in the process of creating an Advise Board that would be the board that would represent students and their requests/complaints/petitions to the EU. In that sense, it is very important that all of us register and participate in EMA so we can have more reprensentation.
Finally on day two there were the elections for president and vice-president of EMA which will be on the job for 2 years. Jean-Carlos Pelicano was elected the new president and Hady Abi-Nader the new vice president.
Well, I hope you could get a good picture of the event from this post and I would like to stress the message about the importance of participating and contributing with your ideas, opinions and disagreements, because that is the only way we can be heard. As we won't be heard individually.
Wishing all the best for all,
Viviane
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