Erasmus Mundus Interns at the Vet School

In October 2021, the School of Veterinary Medicine took in its very first Erasmus Mundus students for a three-month long placement - Solenn from Saint Rémy la Varenne and Sophie-Lou who originally hails from Corsica.  Both students are first year Higher National Diploma students in Office Management in Lycée Chevrollier Angers. 

After a busy orientation day, Sophie-Lou and Solenn embarked on their unique learning journey which involved them diligently and conscientiously working their way through a number of projects, such as an Open Day project for UCD Student Advisers; a poster outlining supports available to students; research with UCD Careers Service; preparing a visit to the Vet School from a (hypothetical!) billionaire benefactor and a city centre cultural experience for an overseas team of visitors; GDPR, child protection and procurement classes; a negotiation and leadership module; tackling tricky (hypothetical) HR issues; analysing survey data; updating a huge library database; and creating a sustainability project for researchers. They did all of this while also attending English language classes throughout! 

As with all good things, the time came around too quickly for us to say goodbye to Sophie-Lou and Solenn. On their final day, we thoroughly enjoyed a very impressive presentation of their entire portfolio of work, along with their fellow Erasmus student and classmate, Louis-Gregoire Guérineau who completed his Erasmus placement with Bairbre Fox, the School Manager in the School of Physics. It was a lovely experience for the Vet School to host Sophie-Lou and Solenn, and we were deeply impressed with their warm personalities and their enthusiasm for everything that we asked them to do.

This is what Sophie-Lou had to say about her experience in UCD: 'As an Intern at the Vet School, I really enjoyed my time at UCD, everyone was nice to me and the work environment was great. I had the chance to work with one of my classmates so I wasn't completely lost... We really felt welcomed, except by the weather of course!'

Photo: Solenn at the back, Sophie-Lou at the front