Second year as UAA LCC UK - 2013/2014

After the UNITECH International (UTI) and UNITECH Alumni Association (UAA) General Assembly that took place in Milan, Italy during the first week of September 2013, I was ready to come back and work with Dave Jenner on running the UAA Local UNITECH Chapter (LUC) UK. This will be the second year that the LUC is running and active in the UK, since Loughborough joined the UTI programme in 2010.

As Caterpillar has joined the UNITECH programme in the UK (being approved at the UTI GA), I promoted their first campus wide recruitment event to the incoming UNITECH students, which took place on Tuesday 8th October 2013. All students had a chance to go on one of their diggers which Caterpillar had brought onto campus and operate it!

Next, for our first UAA event, we welcomed the incoming UNITECH 2013/2014 students by organising a welcome dinner at The Moon & Bell in town, on Sunday 20th October 2013. I chose this location as I hoped it would give the UNITECHers a chance to eat some typical "British" food. Four out of the five incoming students could make it to this event. We started at around 7:30pm (19:30) and enjoyed our dinner, talking about life and culture, comparing it to the various countries everyone was from. It's such a nice feeling to talk about our previous experiences in Germany and Sweden. 

Picture taken: The Moon and Bell, Sunday 20th October 2013 
Huzaifa Essajee (UAA LCC), Rudy Birkner (ETH Zurich, Switzerland), Daniele Simone (Politecnico di Milano, Italy), Stina Klingvall (Chalmers University of Technology, Sweden) and Florian Scheidegger (ETH Zurich, Switzerland)

Picture taken: The Moon and Bell, Sunday 20th October 2013
 David Jenner (UAA LCC), Rudy Birkner (ETH Zurich, Switzerland), Daniele Simone (Politecnico di Milano, Italy), Stina Klingvall (Chalmers University of Technology, Sweden) and Florian Scheidegger (ETH Zurich, Switzerland)

Later on in the evening, Abdi joined us after just flying back from his UNITECH internship with ZF which took place in Germany and Czech Republic! Just shows the UNITECH spirit and enthusiasm among all the UNITECH participants. It was great to catch up with him as well, since we were from the UNITECH 2011/2012 year group (Abdi, Dave and I). We could spend ages talking and enjoying life, however, with the next day being a Monday, we decided to go home around 10:30pm (22:30).

On Thursday 23rd October 2013, Dr. Ashraf El-Hamalawi (UNITECH Programme Director at Loughborough) held his first promotion session for exchange programmes in the Civil and Building Engineering department. Three of the UNITECH students, Miquel (from UPC Barcelona), Rudy and Stina along with myself, promoted the UNITECH programme. It was really good for all of us to be present, as I gave general information on the UNITECH programme and the UAA, whereas the others gave some detailed information regarding the activities that occur throughout. Consequently, I have been informed that a lot of interest has been shown in the programme and hopefully we will see an increase in applications for UNITECH year 2014/2015. Aiming for more than 7 applications this year!

P.S. Anyone looking for UNITECH internships with Caterpillar? You'll be based in the UK. Log onto the UNITECH database, go to Company profiles, then click on Caterpillar where you will find the UNITECH contact and details. However, don't delay your speculative applications!