Partners in learning: Engineers benefit from international cooper
Fri, 05 Aug 2011 11:53:00 BST
One of the University of Huddersfield’s most prestigious partners was present for a graduation and presentation ceremony today, to celebrate the success of engineering scholars at the University.
Mr Bader Aldosari and Bill Chalmers, representatives of the Bahrain Petroleum Company (BAPCO), were alongside Huddersfield Vice Chancellor Professor Bob Cryan in recognising the continued success of an engineering partnership between the two institutions.
Each year the University offers four or five places to working engineers at BAPCO, in order to further their education and present the new scholars with a different working environment from that in Bahrain.
The success of this relationship has been recognised by both the University and the hierarchy of BAPCO. Indeed Bill, BAPCOs Senior Career Development Specialist, has nothing but praise for the setup at the University:
“As a company, we see offering students international exposure an important part of the whole education process. Not only are they engaging in academic challenges, the students interact with people from many different cultures, from different parts of the world.
“What we find is that this university is particularly good at welcoming international students. The whole student experience here is friendly, from the international office through to lecturers. The service is settling for new students; we find the academic staff here very supportive. They are very demanding in terms of what their standards are, and we’ve done a lot of work in identifying some of the pre-requisites such as maths and English that the students need in place to flourish here.
One student who has reached his full potential at the University is Khalil Aryan, an engineer-come-scholar from BAPCO. He has come to epitomise the success of the relationship between institutions, receiving a first class degree in Engineering in Technology Management.
Khalil sees the joint venture between the institutions as the reason for his success:
“It has not been easy but the University’s facilities and management has made life very enjoyable to study here. It was very tough to study at first, but I realised could do it!
“There is a very friendly staff setup here at the University. From the first day I came here I detected this friendly environment. There is no barrier between students and staff, so we lived here as a family. If any of us had any problems, the University would help us resolve them immediately.
“All that I have achieved started with my experience with BAPCO, and has helped me to succeed at Huddersfield. BAPCO sent me here to educate myself and I am very grateful they sent me to Huddersfield.”
Khalil is just one example of the result of three years work in re-establishing an old relationship with the company. International recruitment manager, Bruce Mehrdadi, has overseen many student transitions between international companies and the University over the decades. Indeed, he stipulates BAPCO as a successful partner:
“The students are already employed. They are engineers before joining and – according to my calculations – 41 of BAPCOs engineers are graduates from Huddersfield, working from technical positions right up to senior members of the company.
“Over the last few years I have travelled all over the world meeting students. The University therefore gets engineers from all over the world, as I visit Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, India… and bring them all to Huddersfield.”
The presentation serves to strengthen the bond between the University and the Bahraini company. The success of engineering students comes from both sides of the partnership, and helps to educate scholars such as Khalil to first-class standards.
Editor's Note:
Also included in the picture (top) are
Bruce Mehrdadi - Former International Recruitment Manager, University of Huddersfield
Bill Chalmers - BAPCO Senior Career Development Specialist
Professor David Taylor - Dean of International Development
