Kent hosted its first International Student Experience Fair on Tuesday 29th January 2013. The event was attended by over 200 students who came along to meet with the support departments represented there. The aim of the event was to raise awareness and to offer students a chance to learn how to enhance their studies and employability.
Staff involved included representatives from International Development, Student Learning Advisory Service, Kent Enterprise, Careers and Employability Service, Library Services, Kent Union, Centre for English and World Languages and the Disability and Dyslexia Support Service.
Students that attended were also entered into a draw with a chance to win up to £40 worth of book tokens. The winners were Hasret Tepeli (International Law with International Relations) and Mahreen Mahmoud, a Postgraduate Research student. Hasret said that she found the fair really useful and would like to see it repeated in September for all new International Students and Mahreen said that the fair was a great opportunity to interact with other international students.
Joanne Ganderton-Smith, Director of International Development said,
“A successful and positive International Student Experience is a key objective of our internationalisation strategy at Kent. We were delighted to host such a useful and informative event to remind new and existing students of the wide range of support services and development opportunities available to them. I’m delighted to say that we are currently achieving very high levels of student satisfaction at Kent, with a score of 96% in our autumn 2012 International Student Survey.”
The fair was extremely well received with great feedback given and most students recommending that the event is repeated again in the future.