History Book of BEST

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It was the 9th of April 1998, and in the heart of Transilvania, Cluj-Napoca the General

Assembly was taking place. On that day Krisz, Riki and Ursa were doing the presentation of

TIGro, with its brand new framework. Now, not only they decided to make a more informal presentation with leaflets instead of the usual slideshow, but the wanted to have a nice PR image to show the delegates. Rushing on the moment, the choice fell on a tiger paw, and that, alongside with other tigers’ image, was how it was presented to the delegates. The motto used back then would have a life much longer its creators expected. “Welcome to the Jungle” from that day in 1998 was for long time the big headline in the TIGro pages inside Private Area, and the exact sentence written in the email that welcomed a new member in the committee. And whole new culture was around it: the members of the committee were designated as “TIGers”, the mailing list of the active member was “The Jungle”, a training event visiting LBGs was “the caravan” with a Camel as logo, the alumni mailing list was “the Desert” and the paw was on any TIGro made material. It was no surprise to upon becoming coordinator of TIGro when he received a puppet of TIGer, the gift that is passed coordinator to coordinator. As the SPOC committee had the unofficial mascot of a chicken, (a nice meal for a Tiger!) there was a friendly rivalry between the two committees who would never miss a chance in internal events such as GMs, ICFs or even RMs to joke with each other trough their slideshows, presentations, or even promotional materials.

Educational Committee (EduCo)

BEST is one of the international students organization that has an educational programme and this is due to EduCo (Educational Committee). Events on education are designed in order to reach outcomes to improve our educational process. The same outcomes are presented and shared on international conferences attended by other organizations, professors and students. H3E was the first Thematic Network that BEST took officially part in and it had been established by two European academic organizations (CESAER and SEFI), together with BEST.

Having been given the support of the European Commission, under the SOCRATES-

Programme, it saw a unique opportunity to contribute to the framework for a new structure in Higher Engineering Education for Europe. All three organizations shared their wide experience on an international level and worked towards reaching the goals set for H3E. The aims of the initial three-year project of H3E were to create a forum for the development, dissemination and promotion of ideas extending the European dimension in European higher engineering education, while still retaining, or even raising, its traditionally high quality, and also increasing the number of those having the opportunity to contribute to this process.

Through the Educational Programme, BEST is involved in facilitating discussions in educational matters and transferring the results to other interested parties. BEST through EduCo is therefore organising Symposia and BACos with the participation of the main stakeholders

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in education. This should increase technology students’ awareness of educational issues by letting them discuss those topics among themselves and above all, with their natural counterparts in the educational, and in the case of BACo, the industrial world, teachers and company representatives, respectively.

EduCo is the committee in BEST that deals with the Educational Programme and Educational Involvement of BEST. Thus more information is mentioned in the article about Educational Involvement.

Structure of the Committee

Until 2004 the EduCo members (the committee coordinator and project coordinators) were elected by the General Assembly of BEST. The committee coordinator was a full member of the Board of BEST and had the title Vice-President for Educational Policies. The then framework of EduCo described it as follows:

‘The Coordinator represents the committee in the International Board and has all obligations and rights that are provided to him/her by the status of the vice-president of BEST. In the committee there are certain members that have a specific responsibility of coordinating one or more of the projects. These EduCo Members are called Project Coordinators of the

Educational Committee and have to be ratified by a General Meeting (Generally Assembly or President meeting)’

However these regulations changed in PM04 and since then all full members of EduCo have the right to apply for both positions. The voting procedure is clarified by the internal regulations of BEST and it is no longer performed during GMs. Thanks to these changes to the regulations of EduCo, lots of members have joined it in the past years, increasing the quality of EoEs. Since 2004 EduCo is an open committee and all BEST members who show their motivation are able to join and give their input in all EduCo matters.

More over, EduCo coordinator was the only coordinator that was elected directly from the plenary during GAs. The reason for this was that the EduCo coordinator was representing whole BEST when attending various conferences, and thus the LBGs should vote for him/ her. However, this changed in PM06, since a common framework was voted for all the committees, and the voting procedure for the coordinator changed to follow the rest of the committees (election inside the committee and then approval by the plenary).

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EduCO Alumni Meeting Brussels in 2006

Big contributors

EduCo and the idea of Educational Involvement wouldn’t have ever been possible without the people that believed in it. These people devoted their time and energy not only because they wanted to improve the engineering education in Europe, but also because they wanted to make it possible for other students to do so. On the other hand, EduCo got developed not only due to the personal work of its members, but also because of some people outside of BEST who believed as well in the idea and supported us in any way possible.

The first one of these great people is Philippe D. Grosjean, a consultant and former secretary-general of CESAER from Belgium. Philippe was the man who got BEST involved in educational matters, when BEST was asked to join the H3E project in 1996. Philippe introduced the (inexperienced) BEST people in the world of educational matters and has always supported students’ interests in the project during the lifetime of the H3E. In the academic world Philippe D. Grosjean was a controversial person due to his straightforward style and outspoken opinions. He was elected Honorary Member of BEST at the XVIII General Assembly in Stockholm in 2000.

Also the people from the first H3E are worth to be mentioned, since Giuliano Augusti (expresident of SEFI), Claudio Borri (also ex-president of SEFI) and other people from the network supported BEST in many opportunities. Communication with them is constant since the very beginning of H3E and they helped EduCo and BEST by inviting us in all the

Thematic Network Project (E4, TREE, and TREE-diss) and supported BEST in taking part into

SEFI activities. Claudio Borri also invited us in taking part in IFEES (International Federation of Engineering Education Societies).

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Apart from the SEFI people, two more persons helped our development with a different way each. Katrin Bijnens as part of EuroPACE team, and Gunter Heitmann that joined three of our Events on Education within 1 year (BACo Zagreb Winter04, BSoE Rome TV Summer05,

BACo Istanbul Winter05) Last but not least, in the list of our contributors all the LBGs that managed to organise an Event on Education all these years should be added, and specially LBG Lisbon that took the challenge to organise our BEST Conference, a very ambitious project that was cancelled in the end.

Boards of BEST

Definition: A board of directors is a body of elected or appointed members who jointly oversee the activities of a company or organization. The body sometimes has a different name, such as board of trustees, board of governors, board of managers, or executive board. It is often simply referred to as “the board.”

The first steps - Advisory Committees vs. Boards

As BEST started officially in 1989, there was a need of a general coordination, someone to take care of the organisation, to make sure the members meet, and also to prepare all the meetings regarding the young at that point organisation. More over, goals had to be set, and these goals had to be achieved. And how could one achieve goals without having a legal existence, without being able to juridical act in defending the interests of the association? Without being able to spend money in the name of it?

All these were the sparks out of which the first board was created. Part of the French law required that in order to gain legal existence an association must have a ‘council of administration’, which was translated inside BEST as the Board. On top of that, there were all the reasons that were mentioned above, that moved the first BESTies into setting up a board to oversee the organisation.

The first board was consisting of the following positions: President, Vice-President, Treasurer,

Vice-Treasurer and Secretary. The President, the Vice-president and the secretary were the legal representatives of the association. The board were:

1st advisory Committee: April 89/Oct 89

•President: Ida Lau - NTH (Trondheim)

•Vice-president: Christophe Fitemont - INPG (Grenoble)

•Treasurer: Yngve Kristiansen - NTH (Trondheim)

•Secretary: Jacob Lopy - T.U. Berlin

Their tasks at that time, as they were defined in the statutes of BEST, were:

• The president had to choose the secretariat, that was responsible for writing

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and distributing a report on the events of the previous meetings

•The president had to send the invitation and agenda for the General Assemblies to all active members of the association

•The president with the assistance of the board was guiding the General

Assembly and presented the biannual report.

•The treasurer was presenting the financial report.

Since the first approval of the statutes, there were a lot of changes happening to them. A lot of these changes were referring to the duties of the board. Till 1991, the tasks and the definition of the board changed in almost every general assembly. However, the ‘boards’ of

BEST were somehow started to be called ‘Advisory Committees’. The only reason to justify this so far is that they thought it wasn’t an official body, and that’s why it was called ‘advisory’.

After 1991 however, the old advisory committees changed their names into Boards of BEST. The reason is clear and can be seen by a statement in the report of GA 1991 in Lisbon:

“We all think that the B.A.C. (BEST Advisory Committee) is very useful and that it improves the efficiency of the conferences (GA). It provides a better balance and an opportunity to consider more views in greater details. It also helps the President considerably when working as a team.

It is important to point out that the job of the B.A.C. can be done by a BOARD, something which is already in our statutes.

The B.A.C. structure is not really representative of our organisation in front of the outside world, whereas a board is.

It’s been considered by the B.A.C. that the work on helping the local groups should be improved.

The Board/B.A.C. concept is not only good, but needed and could be very useful in insuring appropriate representation of B.E.S.T. throughout the continent. Especially in the case the President lives in a “corner” of Europe.

We all feel that this committee, whatever it may be called, is very useful and therefore necessary in the future, to insure the continuity of B.E.S.T...”

Evolution of the structure

From 1989 until 2009 it’s a long time, and during this long time a lot of changes happened. In the beginning, every 3-4 years there was a change in the structure of the Board. This is what happened during those 20 years:

•From April 1989 till October 1991, BEST had 5 ‘advisory committees’, with a 6 month mandate from GA to GA

•From October 1991 till April 1995, the first 7 boards had a 6 month mandate from GA to GA.

•Since May 1995, each board has a one year mandate, initially that was from GA

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till GA. The first one year serving board was the VIII Board.

•During GA1998, a Proposal for a new management structure for BEST was made for the regulation of committees

•Since XII Board the mandate has changed to from 1 June till 31 July. That makes the XI Board the longest serving board in BEST history.

•From the V Advisory Committee till VII consisted of President, Vice-President,

Treasurer, Secretary and (next) GA Organiser.

•From Board VIII till XI consisted of President, 2 Vice-Presidents, Treasurer, and

Secretary. The Vice-Presidents would look after the topical work that is nowadays covered by committees. The organisational concept of committees was started around that time.

•From Board XII till XVII consisted of President, Treasurer, Secretary (executive board) and all coordinators of committees (‘Vice-Presidents’). This was to give more power and visibility to the emerging committees.

•Since the GA 2005, the current structure of the board is President, Treasurer,

Secretary (executive board) and 3 Vice-Presidents (for ‘External Services’, ‘Internal Support’ and ‘Local Group Support’).

The first big change in the structure of the board was made in GA1994 in Timisoara. There, there was a proposal to change the statutes of BEST and add one more position in the board of BEST and to also make the mandates of the boards 1 year long, instead of 6 months that it was before. If the proposal was approved, then the new statutes would be valid right after that GA. However, the board made a proposal about having already from the GA1994 one new position in the board, in order to motivate people, because they didn’t want to wait for 6 months for the new rules to be applied and because they saw the need for it. To this proposal most LBGs reacted though, saying that such a proposal was illegal, since it was against the current statutes of BEST, and after some long discussions the board had to withdraw their proposal.

The next big step happened in GA1998 Romania in April, when there was a proposal by the board to change the structure of it. The reasoning was to shift to a structure that would allow a better definition of responsibilities at the international level, and at the same time improve the involvement of the local BEST groups. This would lead to a better communication and a better transfer of knowledge and know-how inside the whole association. It would also among other things allow the board to work more efficiently on its management tasks. The change was not proposed for the same GA, but it was in a form of mandate for the next board to refine the management structure and also to try to find improvement points in the proposed solution. They also had to analyse the statutes in order to find what should be changed. In the end the proposal was approved, and the XI board managed to accomplish all the points of the mandate. So in the end the structure changed in GA1999 in Lisbon.

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The new structure

After a long period of no changes in structure of the board, a new proposal came to shake the waters of the structure. It was proposed as a mandate for the XVII board to investigate the working structure of BEST. Some of the things they wanted to investigate were:

•What was the role of coordinators of committees (and working groups) in the board?

•How to close the gap between the LBGs and international teams?

•How to involve more people actively in certain projects?

•How to handle the workload of boardies?

•By having extra/less board member(s)?

•By having a central office where (some) boardies work together in real life?

•How far to want to go with regional involvement?

•How to improve the current situation on short term?

All these were questions that were bothering BESTies in 2004, and asked the board to find a solution to them. After a year of discussions, questionnaires, meetings and discussions again, the board proposed the new structure of the board and of BEST: The board would consist of 6 positions (President, Treasurer, Secretary, Vice President for External Services, Internal Support and Local Group Support) and the coordinators would not be part of the board any more. It was the first time that the number of people in the board was reduces, but that was also one of the points in the mandate, since the board was getting too crowded and too difficult to manage.

List of International boards of BEST:

•I Advisory Committee of BEST April 1988 - Oct.1989 o President : Ida Lau Borch - Trondheim

o Vice-President: Christophe Fitemont - INPG Grenoble o Secretary: Jacob Lopy - TUB Budapest

o Treasurer: Yngve Kristiansen - NTH Trondheim

•II Advisory Committee of BEST Oct. 1989 - April 1990

oPresident : Yngve Kristiansen - NTH Trondheim

oVice-President: Csilla Kolhemi - TUB Budapest

oTreasurer: Hens Erik Vetne - NTH Trondheim

oVice-Treasurer: Attila Nagy - TUB Budapest

•III Advisory Committee of BEST April 1990 - Oct. 1990

oPresident : Gabor David - TUB Budapest

o Vice-President: David Ensell – ICL

oTreasurer: Attila Nagy - TUB Budapest

oSecretary: David Boras - ICL

•IV Advisory Committee of BEST Oct.90 - April 1991

oPresident : Gabor David - TUB Budapest

o Vice-President: Thierry Geoffroy - ENSAM Paris

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o Treasurer: Attila Nagy - TUB Budapest

oSecretary: Matthieu Nerzic - ENSAM Paris

•V Advisory Committee of BEST April 1991 - Oct. 1991

oPresident: Hanne Gröndal - NTH Trondheim Vice-President: Gabor David - TUB Budapest

Treasurer: Kim van Roy - ENSAM Paris

Secretary: Bernat Albinyana - UPC Barcelona GA Organizer: Duarte S. Lopes - IST Lisbon

•I int. Board of BEST Oct. 1991 - April 1992

oPresident: Bernat Albinyana - UPC Barcelona

o Vice-President: Andrea Selvaggi - Torino

oTreasurer: Eric Verbrugge (Jazz) - ENSAM Paris

oSecretary: Kaur Lohk – Tallin

oGA Organizer: Anne Nummila – Helsinki

•II int. Board of BEST April 1992 - Oct. 1992

oPresident: Duarte S. Lopes - IST Lisbon

o Vice-President: Andrea Selvaggi - Torino

oTreasurer: Astrid Skarheim - NTH Trondheim

oSecretary: Maciek Bud-Gusaim – Warsaw

oGA Organiser: Thierry Wiertz – Liege

•III int. Board of BEST Oct. 1992 - April 1993

oPresident: Anders Berglund - Lund

o Vice-President: Oriabel Parisis - ENSAM Paris

oTreasurer: Oskar Ahlberg - Stockholm

oSecretary: Andrea Grosso – Torino

oGA Organiser: Tomas Martinec – STU

•IV int. Board of BEST April 1993 - Oct. 1993

oPresident: Katrin Lervik - NTH Trondheim

oVice-President: Dusan Meszaros – STU

oGA Organiser: Maciek Bud-Gusaim - Warsaw

•V int. Board of BEST Oct. 1993 - April 1994

oPresident: Jari Nisula - Helsinki

Vice-President: Ovidiu Sandor - Timisoara Treasurer: Isa van Grunderbeek - Supelec Secretary: Anders Josefsson - Lund

GA Organiser: Paolo Bianco - Torino

•VI int. Board of BEST April 1994 - Oct. 1994

o Treasurer: Matthieu Jopin – Paris

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o Secretary: Katrin F Madison - Stockholm

oGA Organiser: Cristian Bogdan - Timisoara

•VII int. Board of BEST Oct. 1994 - April 1995

oGA Organiser: Doros Isidoros – Patras

•VIII int. Board of BEST April 1995 - April 1996

oPresident : Flemming Weissman – Trondheim

oTreasurer: Alfredo Loreto - Roma

•IX int. Board of BEST April 1996 - April 1997

oTreasurer: Anna Lipowska - Warsaw

•X int. Board of BEST April 1997 - June 1998

oPresident: Vitor Santiago Nunes – Coimbra

oVice-President: Guy Brusselmans – Ghent

oVice-President: Luis Miguel Munoz – Valladolid

oSecretary: Theodoros Mastrokostopoulos - Chania

oTreasurer: Christian Amor Kvalheim – Trondheim

oGA Organiser:aurelian bria - Bucharest

•XI int. Board of BEST 1998-1999

oPresident: Vitor Santiago Nunes – Coimbra

o Vice-President: Andrei Hohan – Bucharest o Vice-President: Clara Edman – Stockholm o Treasurer: Ana Luisa Pinto – Porto

o Secretary: Valerica Telcean - Timisoara Associated member: The SPOC Co-ordinator

o Urska Demsar (May 1998-Nov1998) - Ljublijana

oViktor Iklodi (Nov 1998-May1999) - Budapest

•XII int. Board of BEST 1999-2000

o President: Georgia K. Rouni - Athens

o Treasurer: Giovanni Alfredo Camorali - Torino

o Secretary: Elisabeth Modin - Stockholm

o VP - EduCo Coordinator: Lucia Gregorio - Valladolid

o VP - ITC Coordinator: Paolo Cravero - Torino

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o VP - SPOC Coordinator: Risto Koivunen - Helsinki

oVP - TIGro Coordinator: Kasia Lech - Krakow

•XIII int. Board of BEST 2000-2001

oPresident: Anna Håkansson - Stockholm

oVP - TIGro Coordinator: Riinu Lepa - Tallinn

oMinerva Coordinator: Andrea Casamassima - Rome

omarkeTeam Coordinator: Yiannis Zevgolis - Athens

•XIV int. Board of BEST 2001-2002

oPresident: Peter Zvirinsky - Kosice

oTreasurer: Carlo Spellucci - Rome o Secretary: Maria Håkansson - Lulea

o VP - EduCo Coordinator: Isabel Arribas - Madrid

oVP - ITC Coordinator: Josefin Berg - Uppsala

oVP - SPOC Coordinator: Claudia Chituc - Bucharest

oVP - TIGro Coordinator: Lubomir Ziak - Kosice

oMinerva Coordinator: Niki Chronopoulou - Patras

omarkeTeam Coordinator: Nicolas Chauveau - Grenoble

•XV int. Board of BEST 2002-2003

oPresident: Wim Farasyn - Leuven

o Treasurer: Magda Neagoe - Bucharest

o Secretary: Céline Guivarch - Ecole Polytechnique

oVP - EduCo Coordinator: Juan Manuel Ortiz - Valladolid

oVP - ITC Coordinator: Priit PotterTallinn

oVP - SPOC Coordinator: Ludovic Charpentier - Grenoble

oVP - TIGro Coordinator: Irene Escolar - Madrid

oVPMinerva: Thanasis Vlahogiannis - Athens

•XVI int. Board of BEST 2003-2004

oPresident: Wouter Schaekers – Leuven

o Treasurer: Kristjan Mitt – Tallinn

o Secretary: Tina Toni – Ljubljana

o VP for Internal Education: Aneta Blaszczyk – Lodz

o VP for Educational Matters: Iulia Gherasim – Bucharest

o VP for Complementary Education: Gabriela Popescu – Bucharest o VP for Information Technology: Gwenael Alizon - LBG Lund

o VP for PR and Marketing: Tarvi Olli – Tallinn

oVP for Career Support: Piotr Bryk - LBG Lodz

•XVII int. Board of BEST, aka Flowers, 2004-2005

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