Worldly wise students go global thanks to special travel grants
Huddersfield students who benefitted from Santander travel awards during 2014/15 came together to share their experiences and thank Santander for the opportunity to travel.
Mon, 08 Jun 2015 10:31:00 BST
First group of Hudds beneficiaries of Santander scheme meet up to tell their travellers’ tales
Pictured left: Two large groups of undergraduate marketing and logistics students visited the Netherlands.
A SPONSORSHIP scheme from a major bank has meant that dozens of Huddersfield students have been able to go global. They have visited universities in the USA, Europe, China and Latin America to meet students and lecturers - adding to their knowledge, forming valuable collaborations and boosting their employability.
The University of Huddersfield is now established as a member of the Santander Universities Global Network. The benefits of this include scholarships and funding for internships, plus a mobility programme that allows students to enhance their studies by visiting partner universities overseas.
The first anniversary of the programme at Huddersfield was marked at an event which saw the 40 students who benefitted from awards during 2014/15 coming together to share their experiences and thank Santander for the opportunity to travel.
The multi-national group included undergraduates, Master’s students and PhD researchers from a wide variety of subject areas, including music, architecture, marketing, logistics and engineering.
Pictured right: A group of mechanical engineering students travelled to China and visited the Huazhong University of Science and Technology (HUST).
Professor David Taylor, who is the University of Huddersfield’s Pro Vice-Chancellor International, expressed gratitude to Santander for their continued support. He also congratulated the students for being excellent ambassadors for the University and thanked the lecturers and supervisors who organised the overseas trips.
A sequence of students then described their experiences:
- Research students Ashley Cartwright, a criminologist, and Daniel Carter, an archaeologist, visited the University of California at Irvine and Berkeley. They were able to meet with leading professors in their areas and spend time discussing their current research as well as future opportunities for collaboration.
- Two large groups of undergraduate marketing and logistics students visited the Netherlands. The logistics students presented their work on 3D printing at the International Sustainable Logistics Conference and were able to network with students from many different countries. One student said that “being able to talk about this experience was really useful in a recent interview and helped to get me a placement with Cummins”. The final year marketing students visited the Hogeschool van Amsterdam for a Creative Brand Management and Trendwatching workshop. They all felt that this had really helped them to get the best from their final year projects.
- A group of mechanical engineering students travelled to China and visited the Huazhong University of Science and Technology (HUST). They came away impressed by the size of the university, its extensive laboratories…and with a taste for traditional Chinese food.
A group of 15 architecture students (pictured right) spent two weeks in Brazil, starting in Rio, before moving onto the Federal University of Rio Grande do Sul to carry out an in-depth ecological infrastructure study of the Porto Alegre area.- Dr Julio d’Escriván was able to take PhD student Jung-In Jung to the Universidad del País Vasco and the Laboratorio KLEM, in Bilbao, Spain, where she was able to work on collaborations with the audiovisual computer programming experts Professor Francisco Javier Araujo and Dr Iñigo Ibaibarriaga.
Santander was represented at the event by Damien Mullany, University Regional Manager, and Matthew Devlin, of the University of Huddersfield branch of the bank.
“It was a pleasure to hear the students share their experiences of their travels to places as varied as California, Amsterdam, China and Brazil,” said Mr Mullany. He added that he was particularly pleased to learn how their scholarships had enhanced the students’ levels of employability.
