Welcome back everyone, I hope you had a great summer.
In this meeting, there are several interesting discussion points.
Firstly, the number of applications to the English programs of Aalto slightly increased compared to the previous year. Nevertheless, the number of applicants for the Chemical Engineering program stays almost the same. The professor in charge Michael Hummel is considering changing the program name to be more appealing since many applicants do not know what they will learn in “Chemical Engineering”.
Secondly, there is an ongoing discussion about changing the structure of the English bachelor programs. Currently, the programs include 25 credits of Mathematics and 25 credits of Programming. Based on the student feedbacks, mainly from the Chemical Engineering program, there are too many programming courses. Therefore, the school is considering two options
- Reduce the number of Mathematics and Programming credits from 25 to 20 and the students can choose to study Physics or Chemistry for the new 10 credits.
- For the Chemical Engineering program, the number of Mathematics and Programming credits is reduced from 25 to 20 and then the number of credits in the major increases from 60 to 70.
Finally, it is everyone’s favourite topic: planning some get-togethers. Here are the proposals:
- get-togethers for new students: 16 Sep at 14-16
- Meeting the 2nd year students on campus: September - October
- SCI-A1010 Research and Academia for new students: 7 October at 14-16
- Christmas party for the whole BSc programme online on 17th or 18th of November
Unfortunately, most of the get-togethers will be online until the Finnish government revises their covid-19 related policies.
That is all for the first meeting of the academic year. I wish everyone has a great start.