The meeting of SymBioSE’99 in Amsterdam agreed
on these statements as their targets for future activities. There are three
main topics the symposia will deal with, which are: Symposium of Biology
Students from Europe (SymBioSE), Information Network (IN) and Contacts (CON).
This text will describe these themes.
The source of all our activities and doings
will be the annual meeting. All the other activities will be made by single
groups or persons. The higher aim is the exchange of ideas and the working
together of biology students of as many European countries as possible.
The core activity of our organisation: This
symposium will bring together students of biology and related fields, to meet
and learn about and with each other. The host country should be changed from
year to year so that a great variety of experiences can be achieved. All the
things being done on the symposium should be provided in advance. To fit these
needs, there will be:
Crash Courses: Are courses on actual biological
topics, depending on the knowledge and skills of the host-university. The
courses should provide about ECTS-credit-points. The total amount of time
spend, should not exceed three full days, so that the other activities won’t be
harmed.
Lectures: Lectures will give an intensive
look on hot biological themes. They should provide an overview on the research
being done in the host-country perfectly by mentioning specific informations
about the customs of the host-country.
Workshops: In small groups will be worked on
topics presented in the lectures. These may be by working with biological
materials or by doing case studies. Even a close discussion with a person of
the research stuff does fit in here. At the end, the students should have a
better understanding of the topic and be able to explain it to others or use
this knowledge for her/his future work.
Poster presentations: The results mainly of the Crash
Courses ought to be presented in short by a poster presentation. The task of
producing a poster is very important to all scientific persons. There will be
space to posters presenting a guest country and/or university, which might be
brought along with the guests.
Excursions: Learning about the host country,
their customs, people and landscape is one target of our organisation. This can
be achieved by excursions to special places of biological and/or historical
interest. These mustn’t be always organised but can be made on one of the free
afternoons by the guest themselves.
Event Evenings: Having fun is the most common
idea. So the evenings should be spend together. A sportive competition or a
theme evening provided by the guests are one possibility to get it. Party is
nevertheless a good thing too.
Meetings: To increase the work, there will
be meetings of delegates of each country. The group should agree on a topic to
discuss, set up a total time and try to reach an end. The idea is to find
problems and new themes SymBioSE can solve to help all students to get by.
These topics will be mainly on European level but might as well deal with
student representational exchange.
To gather and provide informations is a very
important thing to do. We are engaged in this work too, to provide aide to our
students. There will be several thing to do:
Homepage: There is a homepage for this
meeting, on which will be found all informations about the meetings and our
activities.
Mailinglist: The existing mailinglist will be
converted to a list that provides real “listserv”-functionality. That means,
that it should be possible for everyone to subscribe or unsubscribe
her-/himself from the list without administrator activity. This will enable all
students to take part in our list.
National Homepages: All countries will be motivated to
set up a national homepage on which they ought to provide a collection of
addresses of the biological faculties of their country (including: postal
address of the students-representation <if not existing: address of someone
at the university who will pass by post for students to them>, email,
telefon- & fax-numbers as well as the homepage).
Discussion Board: A web page is provided, that will
store questions and answers. This will be done in a public manner. Each person
is encouraged to post questions and to answer / comment on other ones
topics.
Informations: All the informations that are
collected or produced by the symposia will be stored on that web-side, so that
everybody can access them. The format of these datas will be selected to fit
the needs (HTML, RTF or even database-engines).
An organisation which has no contacts can’t be
very well known. So there should be as much interaction as possible.
Biological Groups: Not just European organisations
but even national or special associations should be contacted to inform about
each other. Main interest must be the increase in knowledge of our
organisation.
Fond Rising: It’s money that matters. Not just
to keep the participation fee as low as possible but also to enable students
from poorer countries of Europe the journey to SymBioSE must be a primary aim
of this activity. To achieve this there must be a close contact towards the
industry, the European Union and national institutions as universities or other
groups.
Student
Representations:
The contact to other groups working on a related field of interest on student
level is important to. To learn from the problems of others might lend to an
increased stability of our organisation.
Amsterdam, 13. august 1999
The targets of SymBioSE are the exchange on the
level of students of biological and biology-related faculties from all over
Europe.
This will be achieved in first place by the
annual meetings. These symposium will take place in different countries. The students
should improve their english skills, learn about new or other biological topics
and learn about different countries and customs.
The second important activity is information
management. Informations should be made accessible about our activities to all
interested parties.
The third activity must be fund rising to
secure the future of our meeting.