KSA MArch student Srimathi Aiyer has successfully been awarded a sum of £1,000 by the Santander Mobility Scholarship scheme. The scholarship is primarily aimed at students attending an exchange programme at any one of the University of Kent’s partner universities abroad. Srimathi will be spending the Autumn term 2014 of her Stage 5 academic year at the Washington Alexandria Architecture Consortium (WAAC) as part of Virginia Tech University in the United States of America.
Mike Richards, Programme Director for the MArch programme, has expressed the following:
“We are delighted that KSA have been invited by Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University (Virginia Tech) to renew its membership of VT’s consortia of overseas schools of architecture, which we initially joined in 2011. Ranked the No. 1 School for undergraduate architectural education in the United States, Virginia Tech has a metropolitan ‘graduate’ Washington-Alexandria Architecture Centre, (WAAC) located in Old Town Alexandria, immediately adjacent to Washington DC. Under the consortia agreement, WAAC acts as a US facility for the KSA students who follow a dedicated KSA MArch ‘Study Abroad’ module as an umbrella that allows participating KSA MArch students to select VT modules to study whilst there, thus enriching their diverse experience of architectural education. Participating students are selected on merit and study at VT for a term in either Stage 4 or 5 of the MArch, and then return to enrich the studio culture at Kent.”
Dr Manolo Guerci, KSA Director of Internationalisation said, “I would like to congratulate Srimathi for being such an enthusiastic participant to our internationalisation scheme. The school counts amongst its exchange programmes some of the best universities in Europe and overseas, such as the schools of architecture at Lille, Rome and Istanbul. Virginia Tech is a popular destination for our M.Arch students and we are delighted to continue a healthy collaboration.”
Srimathi Aiyer speaks about the awarded scholarship, “I am thrilled to have received this financial award, as it will be incredibly useful for study materials as I begin my 5th Year. I have decided that I want to specialise in international architecture and the study of urban communities from around the world, so I knew that the exchange programme would be right up my street. I am looking forward to the academic and cultural experience in the United States. I am interested to see how this experience will feed into my studies as I return to Kent in January and moreover, how this experience can improve my employability in the future.”