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Askham Bryan College Students see more of the world!
There are wonderful opportunities for Askham Bryan College students to be considered for exchange visits to similar colleges in Europe. Here’s a summary of the visits that were made in 2006 and 2007.
Kvinnerstaskolan, Orebro, Sweden (May 2007)
Välkommen till Kvinnerstaskolan! Welcome to Kvinnerstaskolan – that’s what nine lucky students and four members of staff from Askham Bryan College heard when they arrived in Sweden in May for a four-week exchange trip to this land-based college, near the city of Orebro. The students are studying horticulture, arboriculture and animal management and had a chance to live, work and study alongside their opposite numbers in Sweden.
Kvinnerstaskolan is similar to Askham Bryan in that the main subjects available are agriculture, horticulture, animal management, forestry and equine management, but there are also many differences. They have 300 hectares of land suitable for agricultural use plus an additional 500 hectares of forest. A typical day starts at 8.20am (which came as a shock to a few of the English students and staff!) but ends at 3.30pm. To help them get into the swing of life in Sweden, before the trip everyone had some basic lessons in Swedish and the change to investigate some of the social and cultural differences. They also made some email ‘pen-pals’ before their trip. Their month in Sweden also included visits to the city of Orebro, the local water park, zoo and forests, some football and ice hockey matches and a trip to the Swedish capital, Stockholm, which is about 200 kilometres to the east.
In September we are looking forward to six students from Kvinnerstaskolan coming to Askham Bryan for a return visit.
Corvinus University, Budapest, Hungary (June/July 2006)
Thursday 8th June 2006 saw 4 of our students studying on the Foundation Degree in Horticulture course set out for a 4 week placement to the Experimental Farm of the Faculty of Horticultural Science at in Budapest, Hungary. The students stayed in accommodation on the Experimental Farm for the full 4 weeks although the last week was taken up with learning the culture and language.
Students were able to experience working in several areas at the university, including:
The Garden of Medicinal and Aromatic Plants
The Garden of Vegetable Plants
The Nursery of Fruit Growing and Ornamental Plants
Visits were also made to a large garden centre, the wholesale flower market, a plant breeding organisation to view their display area, a cash and carry nursery stock and ornamental tree specialist and the University’s second research centre concentrating on viticulture. They had a variety of jobs to do from hoeing the poppy fields, picking flowers off a number of varieties of chamomile (part of a research project to investigate the quality/quantity of oils), helping to set up research experiments looking at the effects of various mulches on the growth of tomatoes to working in the glasshouses in temperatures of 50◦C.
In the last week, the students set off to explore Budapest itself visiting art galleries, taking the waters at the thermal bath in the city park, a trip to the opera and tasting well known Hungarian dishes. There was also a train ride to Visigrad, a small town to the north of Budapest, and then a climb to the Citadel perched on top of the hill before travelling back by boat along the Danube to the City.
Did they enjoy it? In their own words:
"The trip is going well. We are having great fun and learning loads of things about the way that things work over here. We have had a lot of help from everyone and have been shown much kindness".
"It was fantastic, we learnt so much and the Hungarians laid the red carpet out for us wherever we went".
Meriokoski College, Finland (March 2006)
On 9 January 2006, 8 Finnish students and a member of staff from Meriokoski College in Finland arrived at Askham Bryan College to work alongside us for a month. It was also a chance for 12 lucky Askham Bryan College students to make new friends and start some cultural training before their exchange visit back to Meriokoski in March. Accompanied by four members of staff, the engineering, equine and agricultural students had the chance to get grips with a different culture and the practicalities of working in their specialist sectors in freezing temperatures!
Everyone involved agreed it was a great experience and the chance of a lifetime to live and study in a new environment.
Askham Bryan College students have opportunities to participate in visits such as these as part of Leonardo da Vinci scheme which is the European Community’s vocational training programme. It encourages collaboration between organisations involved in vocational training and aims to improve the quality of training provision, develop the skills and mobility of the workforce, stimulate innovation and enhance the competitiveness of European industry (http://www.leonardo.org.uk)