Students Often Responsible for Changes

It’s international Students‘ day today.

This day has a long history as well as impacts and scale of student movements. As some kind of intellectual nucleus these movements are often a source for fundamental changes. The International Students’ Day has its origin in the late 1930s as Prague university students rebelled against the National Socialists. In this sense students have called attention to political and social over time.

And this will be the case for today. In Germany students and pupils from vocational colleges will protest against the current educational system and the bad conditions for education. Likely, there will be only small improvement by the public sector due to the chronic lack of cash in all of the federal states. But not only is the public sector fully responsible for good education. Companies with their demand for well-educated young professionals must also contribute to the expenses. That does not necessarily means to pay for education materials.

Even if we at ifu offer of course our software solutions for educational purpose at special discounts we try to push it to a more topic-driven level. By annually awarding the Umberto Student Award we want to draw more attention to student projects in which our software is applied. Thus, it is not about the price itself but about giving interesting and exciting projects a higher visibility. The jury consists of scientists and practical users, and every year it is very challenging to decide who the three winners are.

At the beginning I have noted students being the source for change. In our context it is not reduced to protesting or emphasizing bad conditions. The numerous projects handed in by students wirking with Umberto prove, that student research provides practical solutions for topics like Life Cycle Assessment, Waste Management or Production Planning. Take Yoann Méry for instance: The winner of 2011 developed a tool based on Umberto as a working environment to assess the production and treatment of drinking water. A presentation on that work can be downloaded at ifu’s website. Therefore, students and their work can be a source for change and improvement.

From now on, students are again invited to hand in their projects. We are looking forward to get to know new areas of application for our software. All information, criteria and prices can be found on download our information sheet.

Article image by velkrO