Circle U. Student Fellows at the University of Oslo: Maja Kristine Eriksen, Kristine Dragland and Kristine Dragland.
Maja and Kristine were student fellows within the Circle U.'s Open Campus team, working to build and define Open Campus. Caspar has worked with Academic Chair Markus Bugge, and one of his main tasks has been focusing on initiatives to increase student-led innovation, in particular the Entrepreneurial Change-making programme, hosted by UC Louvain.
The importance of perseverance
"Taking part in developing the alliance has been both fun, meaningful and frustrating at the same time. Many ideas have been proposed, and almost as many have been laid aside after discussions with the team. Thus, we have learned both the importance of perseverance in such a project, but also how many different aspects are to be considered when developing offerings on a great scale between different European universities," say Maja and Kristine.
"The entire project has given me valuable insight into how universities operate from the inside, and how the future of education and research is shaped by collaboration across institutions. I've learned that coordinating such an endeavour across institutional and cultural boundaries involves a lot of work, but I've also seen the benefits that tackling these challenges can bring," Caspar adds.
Students must be involved
Maja and Kristine say that in order for Circle U. to be an alliance with many attractive offerings for students, student fellows and students involvement in the development phase should be a priority at all partner universities. To ensure these offerings reach a great amount of the alliance's student mass, "Circle U. must include all types of students at every university in the development of the offerings," they say.
Caspar agrees: "I think the most important thing for Student Fellows going forward is for them to have clearly defined tasks, roles and responsibilities."
"The area where I think Student Fellows could contribute the most, is in reaching out to students and staff that are already working on initiatives and helping them connect to other people across the alliance," he concludes.
