News from Cork

Hello Agris Mundus,
Very warm season’s greetings from Cork.

Regional representative elections

As you know that we are only two Agris Mundus students here in Cork, we held very competitive elections for regional representative.
There were two candidates, myself (Timothy) and Vicente. The first round of elections was very competitive, and it ended with a 1-1 for the two votes cast.
There was a run-off between the two candidates, and this time Vicente emerged the winner, with one vote. The other candidate lost because one of the two votes cast was invalid!
So our regional representative from Cork is Jorge Vicente Asebey from Bolivia.

Teaching
Core Modules
Food Business
Food Business Analysis
Food Business Project
Electives
Food Retail marketing and supply chain management
Advanced Food Marketing
Cooperative Business and the rural economy
Advanced Food Business Management
Food security in the developing world
Food Choice Analysis
Language (Spanish or German)

Teaching for the first semester started on 22.09.08 and ended on 12.12.08. We are 11 students in the Msc. Food Business 1 class. The lectures have been very interesting. We specifically learnt marketing as applied to food covering areas such as Functional foods, organic foods, New product development, Innovation, business planning......etc. For Food Security in the developing world, we formed working groups of five to research on one of the eight millennium development goals and make a presentation to the rest of the class. The presentation contributes 40% and an essay on the presentation accounts for 60% of the final mark. It was interesting for us to practice making presentations.
Towards the end of the semester, we have been very busy with project work. Almost all the lecturers wanted their essays handed in on the same deadline i.e. 12.12.08. But we are fortunate that almost all our exams will be in the summer. We however have one exam on Food retail marketing and supply chain management on 08.01.08. So we will be revising during the Christmas period (on the bad side though). After exams, in the summer, we will go out for work placement to any country, company of our choice to put into practice the theory we had in class.

Cork City
Cork is an old, small but busy city. It is home to over 20,000 students from University College Cork (UCC) and the neighbouring Colleges. It is a city full of students from all over the world. Thursday is especially busy (its official party night for students). Students move all over till dawn, and the beer just flows in taps in the pubs (stop missing; you can pay us a visit...).
Yesterday (Sunday) we had an Erasmus Christmas party. It was fun all through the night.

I have attached some of the pictures with me and my Erasmus friends.

I hope you are all having it the easy way with you course(s) and of course party. If you don’t please get a life and enjoy your Erasmus experience!

Merry Christmas to you all and a happy new year.

From Timothy Abeikis (UCC), Uganda