International atmosphere - BE CURIOUS, GO ABROAD!

It's that time of year again - applications for student exchange in the academic year 2015-16 are flying into the database by the minute (deadline 1st Feb), chat service is busy with all sorts of chatter, and parter universities materials are available for browsing in the main lobby. Info desks have blasted videos from partner universities in the lobbies and all the buzz is positive. :)

Some leaflets are still printed... not everything is online!

TAMK has been steadily growing the percentage of students who spend an exchange semester or a training period abroad during their studies. Most students go to Europe through the Erasmus+ programme, but some venture even further. The only unconquered territory is Antarctica, but that may be only a matter of time...
 

Gabriele Mikulenaite, a recruitment specialist from Rhodesnow, showing the hotels where hospitality students train

Rhodesnow is just one of the companies that visit TAMK or promote training placements for students. With an impressive 1000 openings for trainees in the summer of 2015, they held a presentation to a keen audience at TAMK today. The process is quite easy and flexible, so why not spend a summer where the sun always shines? TAMK supports students with Erasmus+ grants, if the training is accepted as part of your degree!

Did you miss the presentation and would like to secure a training placement? Check out the flyer and email Ms Mikulenaite at work@rhodesnow.com

More info on grants and applying for TAMK students HERE (study abroad) and HERE (training abroad)

Text & Pictures: Piri Hiltunen, TAMK International Services

The first exchange students from Brazil and Lebanon

Mateus Engels Henke from Brazil and Fabio El Khoury from Lebanon have the honor to be the first TAMK exchange students presenting their home countries. Mateus is studying Paper Technology and Fabio is studying Film & Television at TAMK.

 Mateus Engels Henke and Fabio El Khoury in TAMK main campus during the orientation week

The students are from very different parts of the world but the reasons why they chose TAMK in Finland as their first option were the same: they searched information and they noticed that the level of studies is high in Finland and the education system works well thanks to the investments of the government. Fabio also got recommendations about TAMK from his Head of Degree Programme in Saint-Joseph University who had been a visiting lecturer at TAMK earlier. In addition, Fabio was tempted by the peaceful lifestyle in Finland so the desicion was easy to make.

The first impression of Finland was also similar for both: lot of trees and lakes, lot of space and a language which is really different from the other languages they know. Mateus was suprised to see how the cities are planned and Fabio noticed how everything is so well organized.

Mateus is a scholarship student of  Science without Borders programme which is a large-scale mobility programme primarily funded by the Brazilian federal government. Thanks to this new way of cooperation, next spring there will be more Brazilian students joining TAMK for the exchange studies.

Altogether, around 170 exchange students from 30 countries will do the exchange studies or training at TAMK this semester.

A bunch of exchange students and international tutors getting to know each other on Viikinsaari island

Text: Kaisa Merilahti, TAMK International Services
Photos: Kaisa Merilahti and Annika Dillenburger

Visitor from Carinthia University of Applied Sciences, Austria

Ms. Aleksandra Jama (in the middle) is discussing with the International Coordinators, Mr. Janne Hopeela and Ms. Ulla-Maija Takkunen and the CUAS students Felix Wiesinger and Magdalena Hamm.

TAMK was privileged to have a guest from our Austrian partner university, Carinthia University of Applied Sciences (CUAS). The Head of International Office, Ms. Aleksandra Jama, was here to discuss about the future cooperation in student and staff mobility.

TAMK and CUAS have many common study fields and interests in higher education so the partnership will be fruitful in the following years, too. At the moment, CUAS is a possible exchange destination for TAMK students in Business, Hotel and Restaurant Management and Social Services.

Ms. Aleksandra Jama met also the CUAS students currently in exchange at TAMK so they could share their first impressions of the Erasmus period in Tampere.

Text and photo: Kaisa Merilahti, TAMK International Services

“No real culture shock, only interesting situations” - TAMK exchange students' experiences

Hiking in national park Seitseminen...

When settling into a new country, one can face new things that seem weird or awkward. The confused feeling can be strong or weak and it can arrive during the first days or even after returning back to home. The TAMK exchange students from the academic year 2012-2013 shared their experiences of culture shock and adapting in Finland in the evaluation questionnaire. Here you can read some of the answers:

I didn't experience culture shock really, as I noticed, that the mentality of the other students, the teachers and finnish people in general was much more easy to handle than in my home country and I adjusted very fast. It was also not my first time in Finland, so I knew a little bit of its culture already. And because of feeling more connected to the people, also going to school was more fun than in my home town, so I enjoyed not only the parties, but also the week-days when going to school. - German girl

One can have fun also in Finnish winter!

well, i was shocked about the way Finnish people behavior like they have schedule for everything, it was complicate to understand that at the beginning. – Mozambican boy 

I enjoyed my time here. I didn't have much of a "culture shock", but the city is really welcoming. TAMK is a very well organized school and I am very happy that I made this decision of coming here. - Belgian girl

Well I really enjoyed for being in Tampere. A small but nice city and of course a safety city. If I compare Tampere with my home city which is bigger but is not offering as many as Tampere. During the first three days after arriving I asked myself "What the hell I am doing here"? but after one week I really enjoyed the time with my new friends and with the new culture. - Turkish boy 

Marta from Spain enjoys a summer evening

My experience in Finland was great!! I knew a really hospital country, in which people are kind and direct. I knew a beautiful city, the lakes, the forest, the snow. I knew a new, efficient university. I knew young people coming from all over the world. Now I know I've a new home!! Thank you Finland - Italian girl

I had Spanish cultural shock. I had French cultural shock and believe me that was a big one. I also had Italian cultural shock. And Hungarians? Dont even get me started... But seriously, I rly didnt anything that could be described as "culture shock", never heard of it before either. Overall, it was rly awesome here and I loved it. Thank you very much. – Slovakian boy

Parties are always an important part of course

When I came to Tampere I got used to language and people easily, because finnish people are friendly,straightforward,interesting.I meet many people not connected to university activities, I had a great time, learned cultural things,like traditional food,drinks, customs, develop my basic finnish language knowladge, also city is very well developed in many ways, I love various interesting cafes, architerure in Tampere, facinated by grand event and exibitions that takes place here. - Lithuanian girl

Winter activities

The first shock when i got here was the extreme cold weather, which i am not used to and the darkness. Then it was the small city that is Tampere and the strange, unusual but cool campus in Finlayson, which i really liked and enjoyed. As a personal development i learned to live alone, to do everything on my own, administrate my time and money, to get along and work with people that has different backgrounds and beliefs; and to work hard. - Mexican girl

Tutors and exchange students in Särkänniemi amusement park

This was an amazing adventure for me. I always wanted to visit Finland, but to live here is different. I like that almost all the people can speak English fluently, so I could ask anybody for help or just make friends within Finnish people not just exchange students. The city and the enviroment is beautiful, calm, no stress and hurriness. I like to live here someday. - Hungarian girl 

 Ryo Tominaga from Miyagi University in Japan spent 1 year at TAMK, this is how he said goodbye to Finland and the many friends he made

Posted by Kaisa Merilahti and Annika Dillenburger from TAMK International Services
Photos by David Nakamurah, Ryo Tominaga, Marta Sanchez-Vina, Kaisa Merilahti

Behind the scenes: Club International Tampere

Tampere loves CLINT - at least so it says on the members' hoodies. But why? Who are CLINT and what
are they doing?

CLINT's "working clothes"

Club International Tampere (CLINT) is a sub-organisation of our student union Tamko and consists of currently 6 members who are all both students at TAMK and International Tutors of Tamko. The board members for the upcoming autumn semester are chairperson Sanna Hosike, vice chairperson Annika Dillenburger, pick-up coordinator Essi Ihalainen, event organizer Marjut Lievonen, survival kit coordinator Dylan Rafferty and webmistress Iida-Maria Järvi.

It is quiet in TAMK during summer, however, behind the scenes there is a lot of preparation going on in order to organize the upcoming semester in the best possible way. That includes also CLINT who are already preparing for a wave of new exchange students that want to be taken care of and entertained.
About 120 survival kits are returned in the beginning of summer by the exchange students who are leaving back to their homecountries and all of them have to be checked by CLINT, so they can be given to the new incoming exchange students in the fall without missing or unusable contents.

CLINT is checking the survival kits

Even though there is a separate person in charge of the survival kits, usually all available CLINT members do the survival kit checking in team work, because it is much faster and of course also a lot more fun.

 With teamwork every task is finished twice as fast

Also the dates for the upcoming exchange student events during autumn have to be decided on and arranged and most venues and means of transportation have to be reserved well in advance, so also the event organizer has some amount of tasks to do during the teaching-free summer period.

Busiest during the summer is pick-up coordinator Essi, as she has to keep track of all exchange student arrivals - a record number of 180 this autumn - and make sure all of them are picked up by their tutor.

So if you are an exchange student about to arrive to TAMK - WELCOME! As you can see, CLINT is prepared and waiting for you!

Text: Annika Dillenburger, Trainee, International Services
Photos: Club International Tampere

Goodbye Tampere!

Check out the video of winter impressions made by TAMK exchange student Stephan Besseling from Hogeschool van Amsterdam:

The video has been shot in Tampere, Helsinki, Baltic Sea and Lapland during Stephan's exchange period. He studied International Business at TAMK for Spring 2013 Semester.

The spring season showed the very different faces of Nordic climat for international students. The spring semester started with cold and snowy winter months and ended with sunny and bright, even hot days in May. In March a rare phenomenon occured when the clear and colorful northern lights were witnessed in Tampere.

At the same time when the summer arrived in Tampere, the exchange students started to get prepared for returning to their home countries. It's time to say goodbye and thank you for this academic year!

Text: Kaisa Merilahti, International Services

New Factory Open finalized the Demola season

The event called New Factory Open gathered several hundred people yesterday to see the best Demola projects from Finland and abroad, the New Factory start-ups and the speakers from different innovation sectors. The day climaxed with a pitching competition of three Demola teams that were selected to the finals out of all Demola teams the day before. The winner of the best Demola team award was chosen by an international jury.

A bunch of TAMK students have been working in Demola projects this season and TAMK was strongly presented also in the teams that made their way to the final competition.

The winners of the best Demola team award, including also two TAMK media students:
Rosanna Salminen and Erika Sangah Kim.

One of the three teams in the final competition was working on a project called "Visualize it!" for Yle, the national broadcasting company. The international TAMK group members, Joanne NH Wong, Lubos Rezler and Martin Kleinberns were happy for being a part of Demola community. After the last pitching, only one thing needs to be done with the project: to present their concept for Yle representatives in the headquarters in Helsinki.

The succesful Visualize it! team created a concept called Uncle Onni for Yle to attract young people. 

TAMK exchange student Martin Kleinberns giving a pitch

The event attracted lot of people to see what's going on in the innovation scene

 Changseok Kang ,TAMK exchange student in Chemical Engineering, and  Réka Hajdu-Rahkama,
TAMK degree student in Environmental Engineering, were happy to present their Demola project.

This was the end of Demola Spring Season, but applying for Demola Summer starts at week 24. If you, TAMK degree or exchange student, are interested to work in a multidisciplinary team to create innovative solutions for real-world needs, check out the Demola page for more information.

Text and photos: Kaisa Merilahti, International Services

Exchange students visited a local school

Geting Zhu from Nanjing Forestry University discussing with the pupils in their English class.

A group of curious exchange students left TAMK for one day to visit Ylöjärvi Upper Secondary School. The exchange students took part in lessons, gave presentations to the pupils in different subjects and got familiar with the Finnish school life.

Nursing student Juan Riesgo Martín presented his home country in the Spanish lesson.

The exchange students appreciated the possibility to see how the school system and teaching methods differ from their home countries. The Finnish education system has been ranked among the best ones in the world but the students were critical enough to make their own opinions. Here you can find some comments from the feedback after the visit:

"I learn that study is not limited into some teaching ways .We should try more open methods that inspire students to learn instead of pushing them."

"Through the class, I felt Finnish school is too free but Japanese school is too strict and both of them has weak point to teach social rule."

"The most surprising thing for me became an appearance of this school. I understand that for Finnish people maybe it's ordinary but I was really amazed by the size, externality and facilities of school. Comparing to the Russian usual secondary school it is a palace. Also a big difference lies in relations between teacher and student. In your country teachers always refer to children and youngsters as to equal persons, don't show any superiorities and special rights which students don't have."

"The way of educating is quite different then in Belgium. We have lessons of 50 minutes and the students have their own classroom. Everybody follows the same lessons but if you want to do more science or more languages then you can change it."

"Next time I wish I can go to the sauna in high school with students there, haha..."

Ylöjärvi Upper Secondary School students were proud to present their brand new premises to the visitors.

The visit was a part of Erasmus in Schools project  that implements CIMO's (Centre for International Mobility) national program. The goal of the project is to offer the exchange students a chance to get to know a new aspect of Finnish society and culture, but also present their own country. Same time the visitors offer an international experience for the local pupils and encourage them to speak foreign languages.

Text: Kaisa Merilahti, International Services
Photos: Panu Alanko, Kaisa Merilahti

Exchange students' opinions: "The best country to study"

"Finnish people are open, and nature is beautiful", "Prices are too high", "The best country to study"

These were some of the answers when the students from Ylöjärvi Upper Secondary School did a small survey of exchange students' experiences. The survey was a part of their English language studies and around 20 TAMK exchange students were interviewed. The answers are presented in greater detail below.

Local students got a good opportunity to practice English language when interviewing Oanh Hoang and Bram Cooreman (behind).

Why did you choose Finland / TAMK?

• Finnish people have good English skills
• Likes cold climate
• Finland was the most interesting option
• A Friend was in Finland 5 years ago
• Change to home country (2 answers)
• Likes drinking alcohol and sauna
• Finland was the best country to study IT engineering
• Nature
• Never been in Finland
• Had been previously in an exchange in southern Europe and wanted to go to a different kind of country
• Tampere was the biggest city in the alternatives

Have you found any positive sides about TAMK?

• Good equipment
• Good organizing
• Food (x 3)
• Library (x 2)
• New friends
• Modern
• Good opportunities
• Good team spirit
• Cheap
• Teaching is good
• Studying is relaxed
• Classrooms are nice
• Good transportation probabilities
• People are open minded (x 3)
• Good apartments

What negative sides have you found about TAMK?

• Everyone isn’t ready to talk with exchange students (x 3)
• School is unclear
• Library gets closed too early
• Food
• Not yet (x 6)
• Some of the teachers don’t understand everything

What is the most valuable thing about studying abroad?

• Experiencing other cultures
• Learn to live on one’s own
• More choices to major in
• Culture
• New people
• Now I can compare my own country to other countries
• Gets more motivation on studying

What kind of differences there are between Finnish culture and your own?

• Almost the same
• You have to stop the bus to get off
• Finnish people are friendlier
• Finnish people need more space of their own

Could you consider working in Finland?

• Yes if it wouldn’t be so cold
• Yes
• Yes, but darkness scares

How would you compare the Finnish education to your own?

• In Finland it’s more independent and more comfortable
• Can’t compare
• Doesn’t study so much because she is on-the-job learning
• Studying in Greece is different because of the economy crisis
• In Finland studying is more practical
• In Finland studying is economically supported
• Much smaller studying groups in Finland

Music brought exchange students together

Farewell Party for Social Work X-Change Students

Hi everyone! My name is Flo. I´m 30 years old and I have been a German Exchange student at Tampereen Amattikorkeakoulu in Finland. It was such a great time! If you like the colder regions, love the pure nature or want to challenge your sensibility of adoption then Finland could be the right choice for you! You get to know different people from different countries. There are a plenty of things you can do in Finland and I obviously have not managed to participate in every happenings or activities.

I met two guys from Africa, who also love music like I do. So we decided to found a band „Came 4 Exchange“ should be named. We practised a lot nearly every day. We also played a lot for Social Organizations, on birthday parties and also were invited to play on the Universities X-mas Parties. 



Universities Student´s X-mas Party  



Additionally the academic options here are really nice. I appreciated the way how the records will be evaluated. You have to do a lot of projects, presentations, essay´s and sometimes at the end there will also take place a small examination. It´s hard for me to keep it short because I am still impressed about Finland and the plenty of „faces“ and options there. 

My conclusion is. I definitely had in Finland the best, nicest time and it was for certain the greatest experience in my life! I would love to do it again anytime! By the way if you are interested in watching some music of us find the links below!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gitnK4lvrk8

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UikLV7RLdr8

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dp8AWP4H4nc

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Spu4Gkif2Mc

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ffgEyel2OvE

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XcLE9vHgGck

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DQXJHZnXq4g

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Puw8GSG_XAk

Text and photos: Florian Gollwitzer, Nordhausen University of Applied Sciences, exchange student in Social Services in Autumn 2012