Student for a Week - 19 students from Eastern Europe and the Caucasus visit Viadrina

"The Viadrina is the first place in Europe that I have come to without my parents," wrote one participant on her feedback sheet in the final session. She said she had got to know the Viadrina as a place that offered her many opportunities and the chance to make international friends. She is one of 19 students from Armenia, Bulgaria, Georgia, the Republic of Moldova, Poland and Uzbekistan who got to know Viadrina during a week in July. They attended lectures, went on a campus tour and a city rally, got to know Berlin, including the Bundestag; they visited the Kleist-Museum, had fun at a film evening and ate pizza together. Last but not least, they learnt about the support services available to help them start studying at Viadrina.

"Viadrina provides very personalised support, both in terms of administration and teaching. We have a very well-developed welcoming culture that covers almost every area and takes students by the hand. You are not a number here, not a no-name. We know many students by name," says Maria Krug-Firstbrook, describing what she was able to convey to the young visitors. She attributes the fact that there were so many applications this year to the good cooperation with the partner schools and the Teaching BIDS conference - a conference to which teachers from partner schools were invited to the Viadrina.

When asked about their impressions of the programme, the students were particularly positive about Viadrina's international character. The border location, the focus on Eastern Europe, the warm support - they praise all of this and emphasise that studying at Viadrina is a great opportunity for them. For some, the plans are already very concrete. One participant writes: "Before the programme, I wasn't sure what I wanted to study. But the lectures on statistics and internal accounting made me realise that I want to study economics."

Maria Krug-Firstbrook is also aware of the challenges that prospective students face. "These are mainly the financing of the degree programme, cultural differences and language requirements," she says. And yet - thanks in part to the close-knit mentoring and support - she repeatedly meets former participants from the programme who return to Viadrina for their studies. She finds out about them when they apply for a motivational scholarship - or when they simply knock on her door and say: "Look, I'm actually studying here now."

Translated by DeepL and edited