Strong start for students in international coaching tandems

New partnerships in China

In order to be able to benefit from Chinese high-tech expertise, a four-member delegation from Hochschule Bonn-Rhein-Sieg, headed by Professor Jürgen Bode, Vice President for Internationalisation and Diversity, travelled to universities, companies and institutions in Shenzhen and Guangzhou. There the delegation established contacts to identify suitable partners for future cooperation. In addition to stronger collaboration in research and transfer, exchange opportunities for students and other university members are to be created. The university decides which Chinese institutions are eligible for cooperation in the fields of robotics, artificial intelligence, energy efficiency and resource conservation, depending on their compatibility with European values.

Strong start

coSTARK brings students together in international coaching tandems

When it comes to questions of career entry, foreign students are at a disadvantage compared to German students. “They have language barriers, are unfamiliar with the culture and the labour market and are not very well networked”, says Dr Agnes Derjanecz, Project Manager International Career at the Centre for Science and Technology Transfer (ZWT). For this reason, Hochschule Bonn-Rhein-Sieg offers a supplementary coaching programme for this group. coSTARK is a so-called peer coaching project, in which each participant is assigned a student coach who is specially trained for this purpose.

The coaches are Master’s students in the field of business psychology. They were trained as systemic coaches for the first time in winter semester 2018/19 by Professor Patrizia Ianiro-Dahm from the Department of Management Sciences. These eleven students met five times each in the summer semester with another eleven students from nine nations. They advised them on job and career-related issues or supported them during the application process. The important thing for those seeking advice was the atmosphere of trust. “I could speak freely about what is good and what is not good. It was easy for me because I knew that everything would stay in this small room”, says Hamza Smaiti, a student from Morocco.

Opportunity to meet The coaches benefit from the programme too, which has already produced two Master‘s theses and a Bachelor‘s thesis. “I really liked the idea that we were allowed to put what we had learned into practice on our own

responsibility and get in contact with our foreign fellow students”, says coSTARK coach Merle Bernhard. The aspect of encounter also plays a major role. In the “Higher Education Report 2020” published by the Donors’ Association and McKinsey, more than two-thirds of those surveyed stated that they “never” or “rarely” had contact with foreign fellow students. coSTARK is therefore a personal gain for the participants.

In summer semester 2019, 14 additional Master‘s students were trained for a second cycle in winter semester 2019/20. This means that the project has now been firmly integrated into the teaching programme and the advisory services will continue to be offered on a permanent basis.

More information:

www.h-brs.de/en/coSTARK_ENG