INTERNATIONAL ALUMNI REUNITE IN LEUVEN

ALUMNI IN FOCUS

Under the motto ‘20 Years Truly International’, Group T Campus Leuven’s international graduates gathered in Leuven for the first time on Saturday 21 May 2022. Over a hundred and twenty of them accepted the invitation and returned to the place where they shared joys and sorrows, and their lives took a decisive turn.

© Julie Feyaerts

International alumni reunions are not a novelty for our campus,” explains Wim Polet, Director of the International Office. “Before the pandemic, we organised an almost annual gathering in China and Thailand for local graduates of Group T Campus. in Beijing, we co-founded the university-wide Alumni Chapter run by a Group T Campus Leuven alumnus. The 60th anniversary of the campus was a good opportunity to call together the alumni who (still) reside in Belgium and, by extension, in Europe. On top of that, twenty years ago at the then Group T University College, internationalization started in, with, and from China’.

Nationalities

The extensive internationalization, with the English-language engineering programmes as the crown jewel, has done the campus no harm. Over one third of the 2400 students are currently from abroad. Together, they represent eightyone nationalities. By way of comparison: at KU Leuven, the international share of the total student population is 18%. Parallel to the growing inflow from abroad, the number of international alumni has also steadily increased to over a thousand. The vast majority make a career abroad. About one in five chose to stay in Belgium or neighbouring countries. Almost half of this group was present at the first reunion in Leuven on 21 May.

A Chinese student representative and a Flemish student in the international engineering programme welcomed the guests. Zhibin Sun and Jan Vander Velpen gave striking testimonials. Zhibin was one of the pioneers who came to study at Group T University College in 2001. Jan took part in the first study trip of third-year students to China in 2000 and met his wife there. On behalf of Beijing Jiaotong University, one of Group T’s first partner universities in China, Vice-President Prof. Guan Zhongliang expressed his appreciation for the long-standing collaboration. He extensively congratulated the 250 students who left his university for Leuven in the past twenty years.

Profiling

Campus Chair Prof. Wim Dewulf concluded the academic part with an overview of ‘Group T Campus Leuven: today and tomorrow’. “This campus was created, grew and flourished on the basis of a clear vision and mission,” explained Prof. Dewulf. “This was true in the past and will be true in the future. In this fast-changing world, it is more than ever important to raise your profile as an organization, as a company, but also as a university and a campus. Since we, as a campus, are at the beginning of the process, it is crucial to make the difference right there. If it does not happen at the base, you will inevitably disappear into the anonymity of the masses or be swallowed up by entities that do know what they stand for and want to go for. So, we keep working on our profiling every day. It is a never-ending story.”

Expo

On the occasion of ‘20 Years Truly International’, a retrospective exhibition was opened with images of the international highlights of the past two decades.

Yves Persoons