Supported by the School of Management and the ATHENA Team at CUAS, we are glad that two students – Agnes Lorenz (Business Management) and Amanda Mayer (Sustainable Real Estate Management) – embarked on this semester-long adventure, where they will work in international and multidisciplinary teams, combining skills in IT, Business and Management, Marketing and Graphic Design, to complete projects proposed by real companies.

The project kick-off week took place from Monday, 12 to Friday, 16 February in Maribor, Slovenia, where all participants were divided into three international teams working each on a different project, supported by a team of educators from all partner universities. CUAS was represented by Verena Fink, a junior researcher at the School of Management.

The students got the chance to get to know each other in person before working remotely for the whole semester. An intense kick-off week, filled with teambuilding activities, workshops, project-related work sessions, social and cultural activities, ended with each team presenting the result of their work and an action plan for the next few months.

We are already looking forward to the project results which will be finalized and presented to representatives of our project partners and universities during the onsite closing week in Vilnius, Lithuania, in June.

If you would like to know more about this project or are potentially interested in participating next year, please contact Jirina Ley (J.Ley[at]fh-kaernten[dot]at) or Melissa Pebayle (M.Pebayle[at]fh-kaernten[dot]at).

Read about Agnes’ and Amanda’ experience below:

“In our first Kick-Off-Week in Maribor we were able to get to know our projects, our teams and also great insights behind the history of Maribor itself.

After our arrival we were welcomed warmly at the University of Maribor, where we got separated into our teams and projects on which we would work the whole week. Following an insightful presentation about the programme and its organisers we headed to a city-tour through Maribor in the afternoon.

During the next couple of days, we had workshops on teamwork and cultural awareness, which were really helpful considering our diverse backgrounds. In between, we worked hard on our projects and prepared the presentations for our clients. A highlight of Tuesday afternoon was our visit to the carnival in Ormoz followed by a tour of the historic town of Ptuj.

As the week went on, we focused on our team-work, figured out how we would work together in further time and started planning out our next steps. We also took a trip to the Oldest Vine museum one evening – who knew Maribor had such a cool vinicultural history?

A week full of great experiences, several nationalities and a tight schedule – looking forward to work hard on our projects during the semester until we will all meet again in our final week in Vilnius”.