History Book of BEST

LBG delegates and the 4 season rule was proposed. That meant that each LBG had to organise at least one BEST public event. Some of the LBGs couldn’t meat this condition so the reasons for not doing that were explained in the plenary.

The complementary education is the most important aspect BEST is concerned of and by its events it brings a new approach of the higher education in the technical universities of Europe.

For all of these events to be enjoyed by students from all Europe we must thank the LBGs and members that had a dream and committed to this dream.

Article written by Mirela Andriescu

Engineering Competitions

Engineering Competitions became and are a real part of BEST since the start in 2002.

The first real experience of BESTies with an Engineering Competition (EC) came in March

2002 when some BESTies went to the Canadian Engineering Competition (CEC). They came back very enthusiastic and started to promote the idea for this kind of BEST event. On ICF 2002, GA 2002 and some summer courses in 2002, small team designs and debates were organised.

The Board saw that the idea was appreciated a lot and asked David Gonzalez (one of the BESTies who had been on the CEC2002) to create an international working group and to work out the idea in more detail. A call was made in the end of August 2002 to all BESTies and soon an enthusiastic group started to create the first EC-Handbook.

On PM 2002 this EC-HB was presented. Competition Working Group (CWG) became officially a working group of BEST and it was decided to let this working group organise the first BEST

European Engineering Competition (BEEC) together with an LBG.

LBG Eindhoven and LBG Ghent were highly motivated to organise this first BEEC together with CWG and so it would be done from 17th till 23rd October 2003 in Nieuwkerke, Belgium with 60 participants from all over Europe. Half of them participated in teams of 4 people in a 2-day Team Design, the other half in a 2-day Case Study, followed by a presentation day. In the evenings 32 participants debated in teams of 2 people. The atmosphere was fantastic and everyone had a lot of fun doing the tasks and enjoying the social program.

After that CWG got requests from several LBGs to organise a BEST Engineering Competition (BEC) together with them. But the board decided to organise also in 2004 only one big BEC, to give CWG next to that time to work out a second version of the EC-HB and to work out a scenario how to continue with this project in BEST.

The second BEEC was organised by LBG Warsaw and CWG with help from baby member Gdansk from 8 till 16 October 2004 in Poland. 80 participants participated in Team Design,

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Case Study or Negotiation and could also take part in the debates in the evening.

At the same time, compies (CWG members) thought about the different possible scenarios for the future. CWG could be providing support in task development to LBGs with a quality check later. The idea of BECs following the seasons was introduced ending in an approved proposal about BEC-events at PM 2004 Ljubljana. The idea of having local, national and maybe a European final reaching towards cooperation with Canadians raised already then. In 2005 three BECs were organised by Sofia, USTU and Zagreb as a first reaction on the PM

2004 proposal.

Also structural changes are taking place in 2005. CWG is merging with SPOC, as the organisation of both courses and BECs is becoming similar. In the new formed team, some people will check the quality of courses, others of BECs, while the general organisation of both types of evens is followed by the whole team. Next to the organisation of several BECs also a lot of LBGs started organising Local ECs (LECs) themselves. In 2003 there were a few already organised, in 2004 there were already LECs organised, some of them being really successfully with up to 100 participants and several categories. Also on a lot of internal and external BEST events a small EC were organised as a workshop as a new and different opportunity for participants.

Having several LECs organised in different Portuguese LBGs, the first National Engineering took place in autumn 2006 in Portugal. Inspired by its success, the attractiveness of engineering competitions and the will to strengthen LBGs by national cooperation, Belgium and Poland followed a few months later with their first NECs. The concept spread as a virus affecting Spain and Italy organising their first NEC one year later in 2007.

Seeing more and more BECs being organised following the seasons and an increased popularity of LECs the idea to add an extra level to the national finals raised from coordinators of Italy and Belgium involving other nations in the discussions. At the same time in 2006 the idea to organise an International Engineering Competition together with bonding and CFES was presented, gathering the excelling teams from the three organisations to compete at the ultimate level. Developing the concept of the IEC needed a system to define the teams who will represent BEST. At IPF Lund 2008 the concept of BEST Competitions’ Final (BCF) was launched as a final of all the existing competitions in BEST with Lucien Romagnoli as coordinator in charge of the project. Presenting the project to the delegates asking if

BEST should set a big step to develop a European final with local and national rounds, the whole plenary probed the idea positively and changed the name into EBEC: European BEST Engineering Competition.

Inspired by the idea, new national and regional finals started to develop in five more so called semi-finals; the result was 10 national and regional engineering competitions (NECs and RECs) with teams from 51 universities, coming from 18 countries involving 3500 participants in LECs. The 10 NEC and RECs were from West to East: Portugal, Spain, France, Italy, Belgium, Central Region, Poland, Romania and Moldova, Baltic countries with Russia and Ukraine

A working group called the EBEC-Responsibles took care of the project together with EEC and support from markeTeam and finTeam to make the big step possible and introduce a new way of cooperation between LBGs and committees. Many new ways were investigated, some more successful than others, but resulting in the first EBEC taking place in the first part of August in Ghent gathering 80 winners in 20 teams equally spread in Team Design and Case Study categories. Topics were delivered by companies, BEST and the United Nations Environment Programme.

The new project created for BEST the opportunity to experiment with media by starting intensive promotion of BEST through the project in some countries and the development of a media centre sharing movies, articles, team blogs and live-streaming to the external world. This is a positive try-out that might affect the future promotion of BEST.

The second edition is planned to take place in Cluj-Napoca intensively supported by EEC and the redefined competitions’ coordinator with expectations to involve more national and regional finals and who knows… all LBGs soon. BEST showed its capacity to strengthen

cooperation between LBGs and to innovate fast… let’s start dreaming about the next step!

Article written by Lucien Romagnoli

Career Support

On the first day, BEST made LBGs

LBGsgatheredmembers,attendedGMsanddevelopedtheStatutes,IdentityandRegulations of the organization.

On the second day, BEST made courses

Courses were great events for students; they would develop their technical skills and open their minds towards Europe. But like everything that is fun, courses were also quite expensive to organise.

Money was coming either from universities (but in limited amounts), from grants (but rather randomly) or from companies (but why?)

To get money from the companies, BEST needed something to offer back.

On the third day, BEST made Career Support

The most valuable thing we had to offer to companies was engineers. And we had plenty of those. It started as a service that would fund the other activities of BEST, but as it turned out, it had also a very important and positive impact on the development of the students.

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Time is relative (when did it start?)

As an idea, we had it from the very beginning. The report of the International Week in Grenoble 1988 mentions BEST should organise job-shops which would be international job fairs that would gather students and companies from all over Europe. BEST talked about implementing this for a few years, but after a feasibility plan, it was dropped.

1993 saw another idea pop up: STED (Students of Technology European Database). This was supposed to be a database of CVs where access could be given to companies. Of course in a time when internet access was scarce and expensive, this was also dropped and forgotten.

On an international level, career support for students started with the launch of the first version of MINERVA.

For BEST members it started with the first Company Day at a GM, where they could meet with companies that were specifically interested in students with their profile.

For the local students, it started with the first local job fair, company presentation, or any other type of local career event. Or maybe with the Career Related Skills Courses?

So which one was first?

The lovely MINERVA

MINERVA = Moving Into a New Era of Recruitment with Virtual Access

The beginning of Minerva CV database can be placed in 1997, where the original idea to develop a virtual job fair was created. The development lasted for many years and by the end of 1999 we reached the first version of Minerva.

A newer, more stable and flexible version was launched in 2002. From 2002 till 2005, various improvements were made into the system, there has been a huge promotion of Minerva and Minerva was integrated in the public website of BEST. Later on, after ICF 2004, it was renamed into BEST Career Centre. In 2006 the CV database was part of the merger project where users have one unified account for BEST Career Centre together with Private Area account and BEST Courses account.

Minerva has been a working group (WG) between 1997 and 2000 where the WG applied for the “Committee” status at GA Stockholm 2000, which it received in GA Ljubljana 2001. Minerva name remained till GA Gabcikovo 2003, where the committee was renamed into Career Support Committee (CaSCo) due to the broader activities of the group.

The main original idea was to create a unique CV database of students of technology and

attract companies to recruit new engineers through the internet. Along side (though not deriving from Career Support), new projects emerged and became a supplement to the CV database such as:

•NExUS - Needs and Expectations of University Students

•University Project

•Career Advices

The existence of those projects led to the change of the “Minerva” name into BEST Career Centre, together with the appliance of the BEST branding effort. All those projects were created with the intention of providing students and young graduates with opportunities and information on their career either in the academic or business world.

BEST Career Centre, from the beginning of its creation, was somehow distant for the Local

BEST Groups, since the LBGs didn’t have many benefits and there were many LBGs that organised their own real job fairs. Some of them even had their own virtual job fairs (e.g.

Romanian LBGs had eJobShop). A new project called “BCC-LBG Cooperation” was created in order to fill in that gap.

If we were to split the history of Minerva in different periods, they would be the following:

•1997-1999: Start up of the project

•1999-2002: IT implementation and financing

•2002-2004: Heavy Promotion

•2004-2006: Evaluation/Termination of Committee/Project splitting

•2006-present: Follow up period

CaSCo’s legacy

In the early years of Minerva as a Working Group and as a Committee, there was separate budget and fundraising from the rest of the organisation. There was a financial responsible and a budget voted at General Meetings. The BEST members involved in Minerva had company meetings and were fundraising money for the CV database.

With the creation of the Support Group, which eventually became the Financial Committee of BEST, there was a restructure in Minerva. There was no more separate budget and no specific fundraising for the project. The committee had as only focus the development and promotion of the database and the rest of its projects.

Things have been moving pretty well in the period 2002-2004 since BEST had just launched the renewed service and there was a heavy promotion around the Career Centre.

The first doubts and concerns regarding the services provided were raised in late 2003 and 2004. On one hand the interest from students kept being low despite the promotion, and on the other hand there were very limited developments in all the projects under

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BEST Career Centre. Till 2005, the involvement of Local BEST Groups in the project was decreasing step by step, the committee was starting to have HR problems and the success of “BCC-LBG Cooperation” didn’t last long. In addition to that, finTeam was having difficulties in promoting BCC towards companies. All the major developments of the period 2004-

2006 were made based on ideas of finTeam members that needed to have attractive offers towards the companies supporting BEST.

As a result of all the above mentioned reasons, the first ideas of making administrative

BEST Career Centre Poster

changes in CaSCo appeared. An evaluation working group was created in 2005-2006 and the results were presented in GA Zagreb 2006 where the proposal to dissolve the Career

Support Committee was approved. It was obvious that BCC was a fine fundraising tool for

BEST and if used as such, it can constantly provide opportunities for European students. The two important projects of CaSCo were transferred to other teams. The responsibility for the

maintenance and development of BEST Career Centre was given to finTeam.

The positive vicious circle

Since going under finTeam, BCC started being developed to suit more the needs of the companies than of the students. However, more companies meant more offers, and that meant more interest from the students. More students - even more partners.

Another huge boost to the number of users in BCC was the Unification of our public and private websites in 2008. After this, whenever a student was creating account to apply to a BEST event, the creation of the CV was just one click away. Adding to this the possibility to export their CVs in pdf and doc, the number of updated CVs doubled in 2008.

The third and most important boost was the implementation of the Local BCC (formerly known as BCC - LBG Cooperation) which meant that LBGs could sell access to the CVs from their university. With this financial motivation, the promotion of BCC was now being done by the LBGs.

Complementary Education Support

Complementary to the technical skills they learnt in school, some BEST courses started teaching students how to find their perfect career. These external events are part of the seasons just like regular technical courses, and they are called BEST Courses on Career

Related Skills.

Officially, this category of courses was implemented and the first career course was announced in Spring Season 2003, by LBG Madrid. Still, in Summer Season 2001, Stockholm had already organised such an event “International Engineering - Preparation for a Global Career”, but as a regular course.

Over the next 5 years, 14 career courses were organised (around 4% of the total number of external events)

What about the BESTies?

After meeting with BEST members on several occasions, the companies realised that these particular students, after gaining experience in project management, team work, international communication, leadership and many other skills, become potentially valuable employees.

I guess we realised this too, because at one point we started organising career related activities during General Meetings. Companies would pay participation fees to come to the

General Meeting Official Opening and meet these high-potential students.

The first full-time Company Day with speeches and a job fair in a GM came in GA Sweden 2000. The previous three GMs did not have any companies present, but in GA Romania 1998

Educational Involvement of BEST in the European Higher

Education System

Since the early times, BEST was interested in engineering education in Europe and wanted to make students’ opinions heard in an environment willing to improve the educational systems in Europe.

In 1995 SMILE, the committee created inside BEST to think about the future and to create our “3 year plan”, decided to include the following aim for the organisation: “BEST will represent European students of technology in the matters concerning students”.

It had the chance in 1996, after an invitation from 2 academic associations, SEFI and

CESEAR, to join a thematic network which was a new EU project at the time.

A new European thematic network dealing with engineering education called Higher Engineering Education in Europe (H3E) was started by three organizations.

This was the first time that our organization had the chance of supplying the student perspective to international educational discussions.

For this reason an educational committee was created inside BEST under the name BCTN. After a while this was changed into EduCo (Educational Committee). The main task of EduCo was to take care of Educational.

Some of the pioneers of this committee were active at international level, and some of the committee’s members were part of the international Board. An interesting thing is that at the beginning, Educo was not a committee opened for everybody. At most, there were 5 or 6 EduCos, the project coordinators and the rest of the education interested people were observers. From the first pioneers of education we can mention: Jonas Murby (president of BEST), Olivier Cuisenaire, Giuseppe Garripoli, Laurent Hendrichs, Paolo Bianco, Guy Brusselmans (vice-president of BEST).

In 1996, when the H3E project started, it was not clear yet to BESTies which path was the right one to follow. With the help of some people from the academic organisations,

BEST learned a lot about educational matter in the first years of H3E. One of the persons who helped BEST a lot in getting involved into educational matters was Philippe Grosjean, then secretary-general of CESAER. He was later awarded honorary membership of BEST for this.

In the early stages of EduCo, it was not clear to everybody what the role of BEST in these educational matters was and what EduCo should do for H3E.

They started reviewing documents and reports of this thematic network’s activity for a

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better understanding of how BEST can contribute. Inside the Educational Committee it was decided to set some clear guidelines on the role of educational matters in BEST. The result was the so-called Educational Programme and the first strategic plan on educational matters.

Nevertheless, the plans and the monitoring of the development of this thematic network were settled through meetings between the three parties: CESAER, BEST and SEFI. A monitoring committee was formed that had 3 types of meetings all over Europe: executive meetings, monitoring meetings and the working group meetings.

Both SEFI and CESAER made joint Work Groups that focused on different topics of great importance for the development of Education in Europe and during 4 years many meetings all over Europe took place and one by one, fulfilled the primary goal of this Thematic

Network: improvement of the quality of Higher Education in Europe. Four major themes were discussed in the joint H3E Working Groups:

•Motivation for engineering studies (why are fewer high-calibre young people choosing to study engineering?)

•Internationalisation of the “curriculum”

•Types and Forms of Institution, Quality Assurance in Engineering Education and Mutual Recognition

•Continuing Engineering Education, Lifelong Learning and the exploitation of new educational technologies

The results of the discussions contributed to the overall goal of the project, improving the quality of higher engineering education in Europe.

From 1996 on BEST started to organise Events on Education, named IBS (International BEST Symposium). An IBS in EduCo’s hands became a 3-days seminar where students from all over Europe, together with academics and representatives from industry, discuss educational matters. The Educational Programme was growing. One of the first IBS organised that dealt with H3E problems was in 1996 in Copenhagen. It was an analytical discussion regarding the problems faced in different countries. Factors affecting the motivation of students were listed and the interest of different potential partners was evaluated.

After that, in 1997, the number of such events grew exponentially and every IBS had a theme of general interest for the three parties. One of the events that took place during that period is IBS Gothenburg.

The participants of this event were students from Technical Universities all over Europe. Some of them were BEST members, but the most of them weren’t.

From the beginning, a set of Terms of reference were settled, some sort of rules and principles