Input from upper secondary school students for the new campus at AU Viborg
Good transport connections to Viborg, good food all day and a strong social environment around the study programme. A wealth of good ideas were up for discussion when around 40 upper secondary school students visited AU Viborg last week to give their input on how Aarhus University can create an attractive campus for future students.
Ideas were brainstormed, discussed and developed, when two classes from Viborg Gymnasium gathered in the main auditorium at AU Viborg last Tuesday. The day also included a quick tour of some of the buildings, which from autumn 2024 will provide the framework for a rewarding university life for future students on veterinary medicine, animal science and agrobiology programmes. Upper secondary school students were invited to come up with their suggestions for what it takes to create an attractive study environment. Isabella Frost, a pupil at Viborg Gymnasium, and the rest of her group were on firm ground with their ideas symbolised with a drawing of a big red heart:
"As we also show in our drawing, the heart is a good community and a good social life, with nobody excluded. If you don’t have that, you can't survive at university," says Isabella Frost.
The students specialised in science, mathematics and social sciences and they were joined by two of their teachers:
"I think it's interesting to join an event like today and to be part of the idea generation phase, and it also helps to make sure that our students are involved. After all, the students are the target group, so it’s spot on to ask them what they think it takes to create a good study environment," says Kim Bruun, a teacher at Viborg Gymnasium.
The input from upper secondary school students will be included in work to develop the new campus at AU Viborg, which will open its doors to the first students in spring 2024. And according to the principal of Viborg Gymnasium, Lene Klemensen Gade, the collaboration between the upper secondary school and the university makes a lot of sense:
”Having a strong collaboration with AU Viborg is extremely relevant for Viborg Gymnasium. I think that when we combine theory and practice, in many ways we’re working with the same approach as the future students at AU Viborg probably will, and for this reason, our pupils are also an important part of the food chain for the university. We’d also like more of our pupils to see the attraction in science programmes, and the best way to do that is to let them get to grips with the programmes themselves,” she says.
AU Viborg
AU Viborg will be where researchers and students work together to create solutions for future green agriculture and food production, with focus on human and animal health and welfare. The veterinary medicine programme will be offered in Jutland for the first time from autumn 2024.
When the campus is fully developed in 2030, the plan is to have 800-900 students studying at Foulum.