Overview of the 1st anniversary celebrations of the Welcome Centre!

The anniversary celebrations on the 19th of May 2013 marked the one year of operation of the Welcome Centre at the Maria Curie-Sklodowska University in Lublin. In attendance to mark this special occasion where the Rectors: Prof. Arkadiusz Bereza, Vice-Rector for General Affairs, Prof. Wiesław Gruszecki, Vice-Rector for International Cooperation and Dr Dawid Kostecki the Director of the Polish National Agency for Academic Exchange among many of the other special guests in attendance at the ceremony.

It was a unique opportunity to sum up the activities that the entire welcome centre team had carried out together. A presentation was made by Dr. Ewelina Panas, Rector's Proxy for the Internationalisation of Education highlighting a number of activities that had been successfully implemented, These included:

A dozen integration events for foreign students and staff,
Recording of 10 promotional films,
6 live programmes for university applicants,
30 language workshops in secondary schools,
1,000 pages of documents translated into English,
2 international marketing campaigns,
Promotional mission to Tanzania,
Expansion of the UMCS GUIDE application,
Design and development of guide for foreign researchers,
Organisation of the 2nd Internationalisation Day at UMCS.

At the anniversary celebrations students received certificates of appreciation for their contribution to the internationalisation of the university from Dr Dawid Kostecki the Director of NAWA and the Vice-Rector Prof. Arkadiusz Bereza in charge of General Affairs at UMCS.

Beyond the formalities the anniversary celebrations involved artistic presentations by students of the University Ayoub Kroudi – Morocco, Julia Romanyuk – Ukraine, Imbogo and Abeza band whose members come from Eastern Africa – Burundi, Tanzania, Uganda & Rwanda.

The event concluded with cutting and sharing the cake and, the opening of the UMCS4ALL Photo exhibition showcasing portraits of International students pursuing studies at our University.

The project is financed by the Polish National Agency for Academic Exchange under the Welcome to Poland Programme (2020).

fot. Klaudia Olender