Experience a mini immersion into daily Berlin life at HTW

Over the winter break, I had the wonderful opportunity to complete a 3-week global short program in Berlin, Germany with Hochschule fur Technik und Wirtschaft Berlin (HTW). This trip served as the conclusion to the 6-month Global Women in Engineering and IT Program, which included three mixed teams of students from UTS, HTW and Swinburne completing projects provided by industry partners. Our project’s kicked off in February, when all the German students visited Sydney for a 3-week summer school. Between February and July, we completed all our project work remotely, before meeting up in Berlin to complete, present, and handover our projects. My team’s project focused on the application of an MES in the factory of a well-known German engineering company.

Global Women in Engineering and IT Program cohort after our final presentation at the conclusion of the Berlin trip

It was amazing opportunity to collaborate with a German engineering giant for my capstone, with this industry-context of my project keeping me motivated over the shortened 6-month time frame we had to complete the capstone. However, this international collaboration was not without its challenges – teamwork, team communication, and client management proved rather difficult when the team is split up across two different continents. But ultimately, no mater how frustrating, these challenges helped me develop a new skill set that completing my capstone locally in Sydney would not have provided (plus, the trip to Berlin kept us motivated).
The program was a great opportunity to travel to new places and experience a mini immersion into daily Berlin life. The program content also included social and cultural activities, which was a great experience to participate in new activities that are not on the normal Berlin travel itinerary. As well, it was a huge advantage having new German friends who would take us around places, answer our questions, and give us strong recommendations.

Program-organised site visit to the BMW Motorcycle factory in Berlin

Another great aspect of the program was travelling with fellow Australian students. This provided a great support system as we all pushed through the group work together and travelled around together. As someone who lives rather far away from UTS, it was such a unique experience being able to travel to university classes everyday with a group of friends. Shout out to our group of “Berlin Explorers” (as our litle 5 person WhatsApp group chat was aptly named).

Visit to the Bode-Museum

Naturally, it was not just friendships with Sydneysiders and Melbournians that formed in this program. I also made many new German friends, who were all so amazing and generously shared with us their life, city, and university.
Of course, I cannot talk about the joys of this program without mentioning all the extra travelling opportunities it allowed. To maximise on the opportunity presented by having free weekends, I used these spare days to travel outside of Berlin to other nearby cities. These excursions included Hamburg, Munich, Poznan, Vienna, and Bratislava.

Attending the Filmfestival Rathausplatz in Vienna

Overall, I would highly recommend all UTS students go on a global short program. It added such great value and experiences to my UTS degree experience and was the perfect opportunity to travel internationally and make new friends across the world.

Nicole Sandow
Faculty of Engineering and Information Technology
Global Women in Engineering and IT Summer School at Hochschule für Technik und Wirtschaft Berlin, Germany
DAAD Scholarship recipient