Europe- is a magical continent to me and it’s my dream to visit Europesince childhood.A trip to Europe can provide experiences and memories to last a lifetime. Not only for travel but also European education is greatly reputed forits high standard and quality. It provides people world-class education and prepares and ensures for a global career. Sometimes academicexchange program creates the opportunity to learn new language and to meet different cultures and backgrounds to get a global mindset. By exchange program, people of one continent get the chance to explore another continent, such as Asia to Europe, Asia to U.S.A, Europe to Australia etc.
Finally, one day my childhood dream came true, I got the opportunity to participate inthe International Week-2022 in Poland. Myself, Sunjida Khan, is currently working as an Assistant Professor (Economics), Department of Business Administration under the Faculty of Business and Entrepreneurship in Daffodil International University (DIU), Bangladesh. Right now, my institution (DIU) is having 450+ academic partnership from over 60 countries to exchange students and teachers regularly. As a part of this exchange programs,recently I wasreceived prestigious fully funded Erasmus+ Staff Exchange Scholarship from European Union (EU) and joined the “International Week-2022” from May 24 to May 28, 2022 at Powiślanski Universityin Poland (PL)where applicants from 30 universities from different countries were joined actively. I have experienced an excellent and memorable learning with pros and cons.Since there is no Poland Embassy in Dhaka, Swedish Embassy approvesSchengen visa as the representative of Poland Embassy. Usually, it takes 15 to 45 days for visa approval. Therefore, applied for the visa to SwedishEmbassy trough VFS and got it within the minimum time frame. Now it’s time to move and travel.In this program, I havethe opportunity to introduce with different education, cultures, communities, traditions of 30 different countries like: Poland, Kazakhstan, Moldova, Iraq, Turkey, Lebanon, Armenia, Morocco, Tunisia, Albania, Bosnia, Kosovo, Palestine, Bulgaria, Cyprus, Algeria, Armenia and so on. The program was categorized different educational and knowledge sharing sessions, research workshops, presentations, class conductions, resource exhibition and exploring Poland as a part of cross-culture visit. At the beginning, the participants received very warm welcome and great hospitality from theUniversity of Powiślanski, which was amazing. I found civil, gentle and punctualsign in everywhere in the program.
The pleasing serene beauty surrounded the whole campus, clear and quite environment make the campus more sophisticated. The building infrastructure is large, high and historic which is very common and identical feature for every European building and indoor structure is highly modern. It’s really an exceptional combination of ancient and contemporary between outdoor and indoor features. I along with other DIU academic staff were assigned for delivery lectures during the program. Though the language was an obstacle, they emphasize on their native or local language and less emphasized in English, however I overcame the situation through the help of google translator while delivered lecture. The classroom was well equipped with all modern technologies and facilitiesand allutility services were sensor based. Students were very well mannered and punctual and very attentive to their class schedule and study. Teachers are very much concern and caring about their pupils. We have learned another thing that they focused on practical learning rather theoretical. Our DIU team and other participants had the chance to observe their health science class where everything was applied study which was a great experience. I came to know how much they are advancing in the field of study. In economics (my expertise), they involve their students for industry visit and primary survey so that students’ can get the smell of real life and serve accordingly. However, in Daffodil International University (DIU), students have also been engaged for regular industrial tour, field survey, industry-academia lecture series etc. since long which made me realize that we are not much behind.
There was an exhibition day to the program,entitled,“Education Fair”, where each country presented their university, exhibited various educational offers and goals and displayed their cultural foods and traditional things. It was another interesting and amazing day to share our own culture and food internationally. As a Bangladeshi, our booth was full of with various traditional belongings, such as Puff rich, Moa, Naru, Mango bar, toy Rickshaw, Boat, Flags, Souvenirs etc presented by DIU. Different countries presented their universities in their ownstyles and all were reflection of uniqueness and attraction.
Exploring Poland was one of the agendas in the program. During my visit to Poland, I was able to roam around the three campuses of Powiślanski University inKwidzyn, Gdansk and Torun. Kwidzyn is alive with natural beauty. Gdansk has two parts, old city and new city. It was amazed to visit their old city and found splendent historical beauty everywhere which is beyondthe explanation. New city is totally different from old. It alike two phases of same coin. Torun is another beautiful ancient city where each participants engaged to apply different strategies to teaching and learning in different groups which was immensely effective and interactive.
Now come to an end, on the closing sessions, wereceived certificates from the hosting university and brought plenty of learnings, experiences, memories, new friends and great hospitalities. A very good friendships andwell networking has been established with all of them. As a part of the exchange program, some students and staffs of Powiślanski University, Poland with Ms. Paulina Osuch (Erasmus Coordinator) will visit Bangladesh at the end of July, 2022. Lastly, invited other participants to visit Bangladesh as well as DIU and they showed their interest and wanted to build academic partnership in this regard.Besides participating this program in Poland, we also had the chance to explore Demark and France on our way for a short time, which was a pleasant experience.
It’s my belief thatthesenew experiences and learnings such as punctuality, practical engagement, technological integrations, etc. which I acquired from the exchange program, may properly utilize in my personal and professional life and certainly it will contribute a lot for the development of the students of Daffodil International University as well as nation’s education system.Hope this internationalization remains continue, strong and expand with more beneficiary in near future and we will also be able to keep our pride as a Bangladeshi.
Sunjida Khan is an Assistant Professor (Economics), Department of Business Administration of Daffodil International University
