Our Spring Meetings took place last week in Zürich, a combination of stakeholders in a series of meetings – Academic Partners and Local Office Coordinators, Corporate and Academic Partners, and the inaugural meeting of the newly-formed Board. The UNITECH Board is formed of elected members (President, Treasurer, two Vice Presidents Corporate Partners, and two Vice Presidents Academic Partners) and Advisory Members who included the President of the UAA. The other Advisory members are the Coaching Advisory Board representative and the Local Office Coordinator’s representative. This configuration of Board members is intended to give voice to all UNITECH Stakeholders in the defining of UNITECH strategy and the management of our processes.
Overall the Spring Meetings were a combination of reports on current status of UNITECH activities, and discussions of future plans. The general theme of the reports was one of stability – financial strength is now restored, a pipeline of Corporate Partner prospects being approached by Academic partners with UNITECH Office support, and the pursuit of a new Academic Partner now underway, and a strong cohort of new students selected for 2012/13. Themes for future growth include strengthening the graduate and alumni hiring processes in Corporate Partners, aligning internships with academic learning objectives and enhancing the interaction between Academic and Corporate Partners.
UNITECH is well prepared for a successful 2012, and has its eyes firmly fixed on building a strong future

We have just completed our Assessment Centres at our Academic Partner universities (ETH Zürich, RWTH Aachen, Politecnico di Milano, Chalmers Gothenburg, UPC Barcelona, Trinity College Dublin, Loughborough UK, TU Delft). The standard of the candidates was generally high, making it a tough assignment for our Corporate Partner Assessors who, as usual, did a superb job in creating the space for candidates to show off their potential.  The Assessors selected 67 students as being appropriate for the UNITECH Programme in terms of their academic backgrounds, their professional potential and their personal aspirations.
Typical profiles among the students selected are:
 An MSc in Mechanical Engineering speaking Bulgarian, English and French who wants to work in a very practical environment
 An MSc in Mechanical Engineering speaking Italian, English and some Chinese  who wants to work in international projects
 An MSc in Mechanical Engineering speaking Dutch, English, French, German and some Spanish  who wants to work in production processes
 An MSc in Civil Structural and Environmental Engineering speaking English Irish and French who wants to work in a top engineering company on “day-to-day” engineering.
 An MSc  in Mechanical Engineering speaking  Dutch, Persian, English and German who wants to work in industrial production
 An MSc  in Mechanical and Manufacturing Engineering speaking  English, French and Irish who wants to work at the juncture of technical and business aspects in a company
 An MSc  in Mechanical and Manufacturing Engineering speaking  English, Greek, Arabic and French who wants to work in production engineering
 
Now the allocation process is underway, and we are seeking to generate the best combination of student preference, academic fit and geographic balance in preparation for another great UNITECH year.
The UNITECH Student Group 2012/2013 will begin their one year programme in August of this year.

The Mid Term Week was a great session focusing on the theme “Leveraging Informal Communication generated plenty of discussion, interchange and innovation.
The current student group worked on Assignment Cases brought by Evonik, Schott, Vorwerk, Hilti, Siemens and ZF Friedrichshafen – Corporate Partners who asked the student groups to generate new ideas for a variety of strategic challenges that could be dealt with through Informal Communication channels and approaches.
The assignments challenged the student groups well and they responded with keen interest in delivering value to their corporate clients.
The work was hard, often frustrating and always stimulating, against a tight schedule going right down to the wire late on Thursday night
The hard work and commitment to task paid off – and we saw 10 remarkable presentations on Friday each showing a high degree of understanding  of the issues presented by the Corporate Partners and the group’s intent to deliver valuable proposals in their end of assignment reports

We took the opportunity of being in Loughborough to work on additional UNITECH Network expansion during the Mid Term Week with many Loughborough  academics spending time with the programme and getting an inside look at the activities. Their increased understanding of UNITECH will be good for the future attraction of students to the Programme.

We were also able to host a visit by a prospective Corporate Partner, who was able to witness UNITECH in action, spending time with students, alumni, Academic Partners and Corporate Partners. He went away with a clear determination to explore the potential of UNITECH within his company.

A great week – thank you Loughborough!

The new landing pages are here!
It has taken time to unravel where the old website’s key components are located but the forensic work is done and the improved landing pages are now live.
These pages are aimed at bringing a fresh, active look to UNITECH when visited from outside the network while keeping members of the UNITECH Network up to date with stakeholder news. We have used a “storyteller” approach – to broadcast what is new and what is happening – to display UNITECH in action alongside key information.
These pages will carry contributions from all stakeholder groups and is open to all stakeholders as a shop window for their UNITECH-focused activities.
These pages are the forerunner of the work that will be done in 2012 to update the entire site and database.
 And the pages are entirely UNITECH designed and built ! A big thank you must go to Carlos <<Encinas who has coordinated the design process and constructed the pages, and to the ad hoc team from Students 2010/11 who worked on various aspects of the development.

UNITECH Stakeholders meet in Chalmers University in Gothenburg for GA

The UNITECH Network comprises 7 Academic Partner universities, 19 Corporate Partner companies, 47 new students, 88 returning students and members of the UNITECH Alumni Association

This year’s General Assembly is being held at Chalmers University in Gothenburg. Several new events are included in order to optimise stakeholder interaction – a stakeholders' fair, new coaches from Hilti and Schott, and new landing pages for website. These pages have been designed, created and implemented by a project team within UNITECH (see also Student News), led by Carlos Encinas (Alumni from 2009) now working for Infineon in Singapore