The New Academic Year, Already? Surely Not!

Wow what happened to the summer? Not just the weather, which was terrible here in the UK but to the time! It seems like only yesterday I posted about how busy we were preparing to be.

Fortunately the hard work put into those preparations paid off.

ELTS had a fantastic summer, we welcomed and worked  closely with over 300 students across all of our programmes and from all parts of the world. All the programmes, again, proved really popular with our students and the positive feedback they have provided is a wonderful testament to the hard work of the teaching teams on the General and Law Presessional Programmes, English for University Studies 4 Programme, the General Intensive Summer Programme, The Premasters Programme for our colleagues in ICWS and the fantastic Hamburg Project.  I need to say a really big thank you to all staff involved in providing such an excellent experience of and great introduction to Swansea University and the City.

We don’t stop there though, oh no!

No sooner had the Presessional wrapped up for another year two of the ELTS team began delivery of our 3 week induction Presessional for students interested in getting an earlier insight into what Swansea University expects of them before their academic programmes start.

This Monday ( 24^th September)  ELTS welcomed 26 Vietnamese Government employees on the 165 Program to the Emily Phipps Building, they will be staying with us for the next 12 weeks to improve their language skills and get a better understanding of British Culture.

Before that on the Sunday evening I was Master of Ceremonies at the University’s Welcome Reception for all our International students,  we welcomed over 300 new students with traditional Welsh dancing and music provided by the Llanarthne Dancing Group everyone was encouraged to join in and learn the dances and the interest from everyone was fantastic even if it did cause some ‘traffic’ issues on the dance floor!

Traditional Welsh Costume

Chaos on the dance floor?

Just a few of our hard working student volunteers with Swansea's Vice Chancellor and Director off Student Services

So we are busy now already teaching on 3 different programmes and preparing for the start of our English for University Studies Programme 1 and  the influx of our new 2012-13 cohort of students, we are also gearing up the Academic Support Programme for new challenges as the programme, at long last, will now open to all students who have the ambition of achieving the best quality degree they are capable of.

I’m breathless just thinking about all this!

While the team is focusing on these preparations and activities I am also working on a number of  other projects which I am hoping to make some rather significant announcements about in the next couple of weeks, so watch this space!!