STUDENT AMBASSADORS PROMOTE OUR FACULTY WORLDWIDE

FACULTY WORLDWIDE

Chimene El Boustany and Philip Lepoutre are two of the team of seven student ambassadors of the Faculty of Engineering Technology. In normal circumstances, they would now be in the middle of their Erasmus exchange semester, but COVID-19 decided otherwise. This does not mean that they are not internationally engaged; as student ambassadors they coach prospective international students.

Philip Lepoutre was born in UK, lived in Romania, studied in a Romanian-Turkish High-School, and then decided to join KU Leuven’s community at the Group T Campus. He joined a wide range of student activities ranging from chess, gliding, to being a radio presenter and a volunteer in Aether, a brand new team of the postgraduate programme of entrepreneurship for engineers. Very early in his student career he also became our faculty’s first student ambassador.

Chimene El Boustany is from Lebanon and choose KU Leuven to be close to her friend who studies medicine. She is active in AEISEC and is vice-president in an association for spacecraft students. Philip set up the student ambassador team at Group T Campus and invited Chimene to join. The student ambassador programme of KU Leuven, has become quite popular among international students who are happy to represent and to promote their alma mater and their faculty to possible new internationals.

Chimene specifies: “as a student ambassador, you are expected to spend some time each week chatting with interested candidates” , and Philip adds that “a list of FAQ was provided by the marketing service and guidance sessions were aimed at preparing the student ambassadors for being able to highlight distinctive features of KU Leuven”. This takes up a few hours each week, with a busier period just before the application deadlines. Philip regularly asks students during the chat to set up a Zoom or Skype meeting. The marketing office also organises two ‘student ambassador events’ each year where they bring all student ambassadors together to learn from each other and to network.

The chat sessions may lead to funny anecdotes, like the time a student tried to convince Chimene to skip the application deadline by offering her some bribe presents… or the Albanian girl who confused the student ambassador platform with Tinder and started flirting with Philip.

Being international students themselves has helped both Chimene and Philip to be better student ambassadors. Chimene: “We’ve been there, we’ve been in their shoes, and we know which advice they need.” “What advice would you give to your former self, is a good guideline”, Philip adds.

Volunteering work, social engagement, or social engineering are some of the names used to describe co-curricular activities such as student ambassadors. Both Philip and Chimene confirm that being a student ambassador has provided them with essential skills to become better engineers: “engineering is all about people”, Chimene quotes one of her Group T lecturers. Their interpersonal skills, presentation skills, service attitude, communication skills were developed by being a student ambassador.

Philip: “It also makes you culturally aware, you can adapt your communication depending on the audience, you learn to work on skills such as how to communicate a message clearly and effectively”.

When Chimene and Philip started their student career 3 years ago, student ambassadors did not exist and so they had to get their information in a different way: Chimene actually travelled to Group T Campus during the Christmas holidays before deciding to apply. Philip was attracted to KU Leuven and later Group T Campus, and notes that in recent years the campus info has focused strongly on promo-tional videos and a lot of activity on social media. Many initiatives now exist to involve international students in the student life.

Chimene El Boustany and Philip Lepoutre

©Julie Feyaerts

Personal development

“Creative thinking, teambuilding skills, leadership skills have all benefited from my engagement as a student ambassador”, confirms Philip. “The student ambassadors complement very well with the engineering training we get, the theoretical concepts we learn in our soft skills courses can be implemented in a real life context.”

Chimene: “The activities as a student ambassador help me on a larger scale, realising that “experience is simply a name we give to our mistakes” (dixit Oscar Wilde) to become a better engineer. They are learning labs for skills we need in our later career.”

Recently Philip spoke to a student from Poland who doubted whether to apply to TU Delft or to KU Leuven, and in the end, the student decided to apply to KU Leuven. “Knowing that your advice is valued by a prospective student is very rewarding and fulfilling. Being a student ambassador actually it doesn’t feel like work, it is a fun activity and it looks great on your cv.”

Both students don’t stop at this engagement: they both aspire a future job in the field of aerospace industry.

Hilde Lauwereys