“Old” meets new: ATHENS is back

The 2.000 students had to choose between 92 courses proposed by 19 different European Universities. Topics range from Regional oceanography of the Planetary Ocean at Mines Paris - PSL over Spanish Contemporary Social and Political Issues through its Constitution at Universidad Politecnica de Madrid to Energy Sources, Conversion and Storage at Warsaw University of Technology. The following Higher Education Institutions participate in the current ATHENS session: 

• AgroParisTech, 

• Budapest University of Technology and Economics (BME), 

• Chimie ParisTech - PSL, 

• Czech Technical University in Prague (CTU), 

• École des Ponts ParisTech, 

• Arts et Métiers, 

• Institut d’Optique Graduate School, 

• Instituto Superior Tecnico Lisboa (IST), 

• Istanbul Technical University (ITU), 

• KU Leuven (KUL), 

• Mines Paris – PSL, 

• Politecnico di Milano (POLIMI), 

• Télécom Paris, 

• Delft University of Technology (TUD), 

• Technische Universität München (TUM), 

• Technische Universität Wien (TUW), 

• University Politehnica of Bucharest (UPB), 

• Universidad Politecnica de Madrid (UPM), and 

• Warsaw University of Technology (WUT). 

Following the new orientations of the European Commission about mobility and higher education and translating the new opportunities offered by the Erasmus + programme into action, one of the ATHENS partners proposes for the first time a new course format: a blended intensive programme (BIP). This course combines a physical mobility with a virtual component. The Czech Technical University in Prague offers its highly popular course Publicly owned spaces (POPS) in Prague as a BIP. This new format allows the students to first discover and apply the topic in the capital of Czechia during one week, and second, to use their knowledge to scrutinize their cities under the same point of view. They will meet several times online with the other participants of the course to work on their respective projects, and to present in the end their findings to the group. 23 students of the ATHENS partners are enrolled in the BIP. 

In this session, more than 150 international students came to Paris to follow a course given by one of the eight French members of the network. For the first time, the welcome session took place at Ecole des Ponts ParisTech. Emmanuel Simantov, Head of International Mobility and ATHENS local coordinator at Ecole des Ponts ParisTech, was delighted to welcome the incoming students: “We were eager to host this event! It is a great opportunity for the international students to discover one of the French ATHENS members, to get to know each other, and to also get in touch with some of our students.” We explained the outlines of the ATHENS programme to them, presented some key information about ATHENS in Paris, and in the end of the welcome session they got to taste some specialties of the famous French cuisine. On Sunday, the incoming students discovered different emblematic places of Paris, and several activities wait for them during the week: a visit of the museum of mineralogy of Mines Paris - PSL, a picnic at the Eiffel tower, a boat trip, and a dinner in a traditional French restaurant. However, the most important part of the ATHENS session is naturally the course the students are following, where they mix as well with students from the French schools.