Annual report BEST Ghent 2014 - 2015

Annual Report 2014 / 2015

Local BEST Group Ghent2014-2015XX Board

President: Lisa DujardinVice-president for HR: Lukas EngelenVice-president for ER: Yentl Van MulderTreasurer: Bram DewulfSecretary: Moustapha Ramachi

Table of Contents

1. Word from our President

2. BEST Facts

3. Activities

4. BEST at Ghent University

5. How we work

6. Engineering Competitions

7. Past Events

8. Previous Summer Course

9. Financial Resources

10. Contact

3Annual Report 2014 / 2015

Word from our PresidentDear reader, It is my greatest pleasure to present you the Local BEST Group Ghent, one of the 96 mem-bers of the Board of European Students of Technology. Being active in 96 Universities in 33 different countries, BEST has over 3300 active membes and reaches over 1.3 milli-on technology students. Since 1989 BEST aims to provide those students communica-tion, cooperation and exchange possibilities.

In everything we do, our group strives to do its part in this global project. Our focus con-tains education courses, engineering competi-tions and contribution to the international wor-king of BEST. During courses, students learn about a technical subject for two weeks, get to know different cultures and make friends from all over Europe. During competitions, students are able to test their wits, creativity and skills against fellow students. The international level of BEST provides many other services, such as educational involvement and career support.

BEST Ghent is located at the Faculty of Engineering and Architecture of Ghent University. In nearly 20 years, we built a rich history, driven by eagerness to grow, innovate and a non-stop search for new challenges. A few examples: In 2003, LBG Ghent organised the first engineering competition together with LBG Eindhoven. Only six years later, we brought it to the next level by organising the first European BEST Engineering Competition Final in Ghent. This year, we orga-nised the BEST Presidents’ Meeting together with LBG Leuven, which is the second biggest BEST event, bringing over 150 active members together to work on the future of BEST. Besides all this, we have a broad history of organising

BEST courses and engineering competitions.

On the local level, we focus on stimulating the students of our university to undertake the chal-lenge of an international experience by promo-ting seasonal BEST courses all over Europe, as well as our local qualifier for the European BEST Engineering Compitition (EBEC). As rich and diverse as our history is, we still seek to grow, build and improve year after year. One focus to do this is our international involvement in BEST. Local members have often taken on important mandates on the international level and we have organised over 35 internal BEST events, the building blocks of BEST international.

This year, besides focusing on some local inter-nal structure changes, the Local BEST Group Ghent was prepared for the biggest challen-ge in 10 years: organising the BEST Presidents’ Meeting 2015, which successfully took place last November. Furthermore, we expanded our lo-cal EBEC round by adding 3 preliminary rounds, which allowed us to reach twice as many students and trigger the interest of companies even more.

Today, a highly motivated team of 35 active mem-bers is ready to take on new challenges, always looking to the future, empowering diversity and willing to stand up to our reputation. More about our past and future event can be found in this document. I friendly invite you to read through this document and discover our potential.

On behalf of BEST Ghent,

Lisa Dujardin President 2014 – 2015

4 Board of European Students of Technology

BEST Mission, Vision and Identity

V I S I O N - Empowered Diversity

People understand and respect different cultures and societies. The environment of empowered diversity supports people in apply-ing their full potential and acting responsibly.

M I S S I O N - Developing Students

BEST helps students to achieve an international mindset, to reach a better understanding of cultures and societies and to develop the capacity to work in culturally di-verse environments. BEST crea-tes opportunities for personal development of students and sup-ports them in reaching their full potential.

B E S T S P I R I T

• Flexibility • Friendship • Learning • Improvement • Fun

I N T E R N AT I O N A L B O A R D

• João Clemente• Pawel Szulc• Emre Yazilikaya• Mariana Silva• Orfeas Antoniou• Paco Gordillo• Vitka Gres

B E S T F A C T S

• 96 universities• 1 million students• 33 European countries• 3600 members• 2000+ students attending a course abroad• 93 external events organised last year


Throughout the year BEST organises external and internal events for respectively students from member universities and members of BEST.

The external events give the students from the member universities the opportunity to increa-se their international experience, establish con-tacts, improve their English and have fun.

Each season there are different courses, all over Europe, for which the students can apply. Such a BEST course typically gathers around 22 participants from different countries, in-troducing them to a technical subject through lectures, workshops and company visits. Also, participants get to know the country and each other in a very intense way, making it an unfor-gettable experience.

The Summer Course has been a yearly event of BEST Ghent for close to a decade. The concept

sounds simple enough, yet the challenges in-volved in organising such a large event for stu-dents by students are not to be underestima-ted. Nevertheless we choose to test ourselves year after year, because we know that this pro-ject is the best training in strategic planning, organisational skills and teamwork that one could wish for. And most importantly: we know how much of an impact our courses have on the participants.

Beside the courses there are also BEST Engineering Competitions. These allow stu-dents to apply their technical skills in a fun, practical and competitive way on a local, natio-nal, or even European level.

The internal events are open for BEST mem-bers only. They are used for coordinating the work done in BEST, as well as educating our members in skills as management, communi-cation, presentation techniques, etc.

BEST University Centre provides students in-formation about studying in the European technical universities where BEST is present.

Besides this, we participate actively in the European educational networks and there are Events on Education where discussions are prepared among the different stakeholders of the high education (students, local and inter-national professors, experts, European educa-tional networks and companies). This way, we help designing the European engineering edu-cation of tomorrow.

BEST Events on Education and Competitions

Educational Involvement


Through our virtual career centre, our 16 000 subscribed students, young graduates and ex-perienced graduates can find interesting op-portunities such as internships, jobs or special programmes provided by our partners. BEST Career newsletters allow companies to target specific groups of students and graduates.

During a Career Event, students get the chan-ce to develop their skills and have a glimpse of the company world. They can attend a compa-ny presentation or go to a JobFair.

BEST Career Support

BEST Spirit

IMPROVEMENT

LEARNING FUN

FLEXIBILITY

FRIENDSHIP


BEST at Ghent University

BEST has a 20 year old history at the University of Ghent, with approximately 147 alumni. Nowadays the Local BEST Group con-sists of about 35 active members spreading the BEST values among the engineering stu-dents by organising all kinds of academic and non-academic activities. Together with the international students attending courses and other events, BEST Ghent reaches a tar-get audience of more than 2600 engineering students.

How we work - Board 2014 - 2015

TREASURER Bram Dewulf

VICE-PRESIDENT ER Yentl Van Mulder

PRESIDENTLisa Dujardin

SECRETARY Moustapha Ramachi

VICE-PRESIDENT HR Lukas Engelen


Engineering Competitions

One of the core activities of BEST is the organisation of engineering competitions. Teams of four students compete against each other in solving real problems of companies (Case Study) or constructing a solution for a given task with a limited amount of materials and within a limited period of time (Team Design).

The winning team will be selected based on accom-plishment of the task, innovation, team spirit and presentation.

P r e l i m i n a r y R o u n d s - E B E C G h e n t

As we experienced a lot of entousiasm from industial engineering students at Campus Kortrijk, we launched three premiminary Team Design Rounds on Campus Plateau, Campus Kortrijk and Campus Schoonmeersen. The winners pass on to the Local Team Design round.

L o c a l R o u n d - E B E C G h e n t

At our Local BEST Engineering Competition, teams of Ghent University students compete in Team Design or Case Study. They get judged by a jury consisting of company delegates, professors and the dean. The winner can go to EBEC Benelux. Besides this competition, we also organise one for high school students to let them discover the uni-versity, BEST and engineering competitions.

R e g i o n a l R o u n d – E B E C B e n e l u x

The winners of the 8 local competitions in Belgium, the Netherlands and Germany will contend in Case Study and Team Design at EBEC Benelux. The winning teams in each competition will go on to the next and final round: EBEC Final.

F i n a l R o u n d - E B E C F i n a l

The European BEST Engineering Competition is the final round of this huge European collaboration. In this event, 120 contestants from all over Europe will compete. The first edition of this final round in 2009 was organised in Ghent by our very own Local BEST Group and the team from Ghent won EBEC Final Zagreb 2012.


Past EventsIn our 20 year old history we already organised 98 events: 33 local events, 38 internal events, 27 external events (of which 23 courses) and one EBEC Final.

As coordinating the 96 BEST Groups and ma-king sure they are aware of what transpires in the rest of the organisation is a tough job, these groups were split over different regi-ons. Each one of these Regions is coordina-ted by one person, and this for a mandate of one year: the Regional Adviser. These Regional Advisers are elected by their own region and afterwards form a diverse team of 11 people who will need to work together a lot during a whole year and will have a whole region to co-ordinate in this period.

This event aimed to gather all the Regional Advisers and get them prepared for their up-coming mandate by means of training, team-building and lots of knowledge transfer. This

event was organised in collaboration with the Local BEST Group Aachen.

This event took place during 7 days close to Lokeren where a motivated multi-cultural team of Belgians and Germans worked hard to provi-de the Regional Advisers and their trainers with an as optimal environment as possible for them to do their work. In a very cosy atmosphere, combined with amazing weather and around 25 people present on average, both organisers and Regional Advisers got to know each other much better and got very motivated for the year to follow. This team of Regional Advisers did an amazing job in the year of 2014-2015 and we as BEST Ghent are proud to say we were a part of it.

Regional Adviser‘s Meeting (1-7 August 2014)

After much preparation for the first time ever a Team Design was organised at campus Kortrijk! 82 enthusiastic students participated in one of the biggest engineering competitions in Belgium. The event was a great success and re-sulted in many satisfied participants and judges.

Leading up to the event 2 successful promo-days were organised. Under the guidance of Hilde Van Maele we visited the entire target group and gave a presentation to promote team design Kortrijk. After a slow start appli-cations began flooding in. With 2 days left all the available slots were filled. A whopping 21 teams had signed up to show their engineering

Team Design Kortrijk(12 November 2014)

excellence. This great success lead to our idea to organise the EBEC Preliminaries in 2015 (see later on).


(1-7 August 2014)

Structure Implementation Workshop(24-28 November 2014)BEST exists 25 years and has been growing from day one. To be able to work efficiently, an organization needs a structure adapted to its size. Designing and implementing structural changes in a large organization is a big project. This workshop is the last part in the chain of many workshops that aimed at evaluating and imprvoing the structure of BEST International. A lot of work was already done and a lot of input was already gathered in previous

workshops and meetings. To make sure the participants could focus totally on the content of the event, BEST Ghent provided working rooms (Therminal), hosting on student’s dor-mitories, food and social activities for the 20 participants. The workshop was both a success for participants and organisers, as a new struc-ture is currently being implemented, and our LBG received a lot of positive feedback from the participants of the event.

European BEST Engineering Competition (EBEC) (25 Februari 2014)On the 5th of March 2014 the EBEC Local round of Ghent was organised. There were about 180 participants. 17 teams consis-ting of highschool students competed in the Team Design competition. Students from our university formed 15 teams for team design and 14 teams for the case study. Our Team Design partner was NMBS, which created a challenging task for the students participating in the Team Design competition.

The Case Study topic was created by our partner Deloitte. The cas was on how to in-troduce road taxes on the belgian highways. The winning case study team from the local round finished 2nd at ebec benelux. The win-ning team design team finished 4th place at EBEC benelux.


EBEC Preliminaries (26 October, 2 & 3 November 2015)

Presidents’ Meeting Flanders(5-11 November 2015)

The Presidents’ Meeting is BEST’s second big-gest event and is held every year in a different country organised by a local BEST group. This years edition is organised by the Belgian local groups Ghent and Leuven, with each over 30 active members. As an organisation that continually tries to im-prove itself, the Presidents’ Meeting aims to evaluate the work that has been done in the organisation and the strategy for the upcoming

months is drawn out. Around 200 highly active members of BEST come together to participate in this event.

On the first day of Presidents’ Meeting, the Official Opening Day takes place in the Brussels Diamond Conference Centre. The Official Opening Day is a unique, international networking event where most of BEST’s part-ners gather. Around 50 places are reserved for students of the local organising BEST groups.

This year we wanted to do something more special with EBEC. Because of the success of Team Design Kortrijk in the beginning of 2015, we decided to expand our EBEC Local round with three preliminary rounds. One round on each campus: Campus Plateau, Campus Schoonmeersen, and Campus Kortrijk. Together with our partner Unilin, we made unique tasks for all rounds.

Only the five best teams of each campus con-tinue to the EBEC Local round, which will take place in the UFO on 2 March 2016.

Each of these rounds finished with satis-fied participants, partners, and organisers.


Promotial and Motivational EventsPromotional

At the very beginning of the academic year, BEST Ghent organised an event with the pur-pose of letting the students, who had recently been on Summer Course or had been interes-ted in BEST, have a taste of the local level of our organisation. Together with most of the current members, several new faces introdu-ced themselves and during a series of games, everybody got (re-)acquainted with one ano-ther. Apart from this very specific BEST Kick-Off event, we also strive to make people aware of all other events happening on the local level, which has lead to some people turning their curiosity for our organisation into enthousiasm and motivation to help out.

For each of our events and services, we have a dedicated promotion campaign directed at the students at the Faculty for Engineering and Architecture. Apart from EBEC-promo, this me-ans that a lot of effort is put into promoting our Seasonal Courses. Besides presentations and flyering, this year we specifically started investing in Motivation Letter Workshop, whe-re some of our members aided applicating students with the content of their motivation letter, to raise our acceptance rates. These in-vestments lead to some of the highest accep-tance rates in comparison to the other BEST groups, ranging from 39 to 50 procent throug-hout the four seasons and elading to a total of 31 students participating in one of our Seasonal courses during the past year.

This year we started to carry out the promo-tion at campus Schoonmeersen, since they recently joined the University of Ghent and the students industrial engineering can apply for BEST Courses. The combination of seve-ral presentations to first and second years of

the bachelor programmes and flyering with a personal approach during the lunch break led to a very promising result. Both students and professors reacted with great enthusiasm. The number of applications for the Autumn Courses doubled for the same amount of courses, due to this new target group. Also, this promotion led to a modest coorperation with HERMES.

Besides motivating external students and rec-ruitment, we do not forget to invest in our own members. Trainings on various topics, our ye-arly Motivation Weekend and Motivation Day and several other get togethers have yet again proven their worth.

Motivation Day (19 April 2015)

Every year a motivation day is organised in the second semester. This day serves to motivate members for the remaining months of the year and to introduce new members in the group. The motivation day involved climbing in Bleau, an indoor Climbing Hall at the Blaarmeersen in Ghent. The day was definitely a succes: mem-bers had a great time and were encouraged to make an extra effort for the remainer of the year.

Motivation Weekend (2-4 October 2015)

This weekend is a weekend - on a rented lo-cation - where the entire group comes to-gether, and where several group activities are organised. This weekend motivates members to involve themselves in the activities of the organization during the year and to take res-ponsibilties. Secondly, this weekend serves to prepare the members for the upcoming year: learn how to work toghether and motivate each other. That’s why several training sessi-ons on those topics took place.


Courses are the main business of BEST. The concept is simple; we gather 22 people from 94 different European technical universities to work for one to two weeks around a certain topic. During the course we try to keep the balance between academic training and social contacts.

A c a d e m i c

BEST Ghent’s activities are heavily supported by the faculty of Engineering and Architecture. The Summer course is no different. The dean pro-posed the topic “Big Data” and put us in con-tact with professor Gert de Cooman. Professor de Cooman assembled a group of volunteering lecturers, who provided lecutures about the dif-ferent aspects of Big Data. Not only does our fa-culty provide the lectures and lecturers, but also

Summer Course 2015 Small World, Big Data!

the accomodation to give those lectures.

These different academic topics included: data quality, deep learning, data managment and NoSQL, the Bayesian approach to Big Data, business analytics and data visualisation. Apart from lectures the participants also had a company presentation and held a debate concerning privacy (in the light of Big Data).

C u l t u r a l & S o c i a l

Besides the pure academical part, there’s also time for culture on our Summer Course! Having such a diverse cultural group, it’s evident that everyone gets in touch with the habits and culture of others. Our local group makes sure participants get to opportunity to get a taste of our local culture by organising visits to cities and other cultural activities. It’s evident that participants also socially develop themselves when having to cooperate in a professional and multicultural environment.

O r g a n i s a t i o n a l

Organising such a 10 day event takes the ne-cessary preparations. A team of 5 repsonsib-les, lead by two Main Organisers worked to-gether during the year to prepare this event. The organisers are given the opportunity to develop themselves in organising. During the year we try to involve as many organisers as possible by delegating tasks.

(1-11 July 2015)


Financial Resources

CORPORATE PARTNER

Our main revenues are gifted to us by the Faculty of Engineering and Architecture and VTK. We ac-tively search for grant opportunities and companies to partner with at events. The following graph represents our estimated revenues for the working year 2015-2016.


Previous Partners


Bram DewulfTreasurer 2014 - 2015

Mobile: +32 473 68 07 44Mail: [email protected]

Lisa DujardinPresident 2014 - 2015

Mobile: +32 479 37 34 39Mail: [email protected]

General Contact

Tel/Fax: +32 9 264 37 26Mail: [email protected]: www.best.eu.org/ghent

Contact


Board of European Students of Technology18 Board of European Students of Technology

Jozef Plateaustraat 229000 GhentBelgium

Tel/Fax: +32 9 264 37 26Mail: [email protected]

Web: www.best.eu.org/ghent

GHENT

Documents

Annual report BEST Ghent 2014 - 2015