About BEST
The Local BEST Group ( LBG ) of Louvain-la-Neuve was born in 1989, the same year as the BEST network. Ever since 1992, it organised at least one course a year. Each time, we tried to find new fields of technology with always the same goal: Welcoming over 20 students from all over Europe for 2 weeks... and have a wonderful experience together.
Our group became quickly more and more involved in the European contacts of our faculty by welcoming the ERASMUS students, taking part in the social part of the ATHENS week, helping in the CLUSTER symposium and finally taking in charge the European web site of the faculty. And we surely won't stop here!
Apart from those 'regular' activities, our group has devoted itself to a num- ber of 'exceptional' activities such as intensive training, workshops, organ- ising international meetings,...
Since March 14th 2002, five students associations of the Applied Science Faculty, including our LBG, were gathered in one big association called GCI or the « Grand Cercle Industriel ». Therefore, in order to fulfil some common criteria, we had to change our identity into the « Contact Europe Cercle Industriel - BEST Louvain-la-Neuve »
Since the beginning of BEST, we have been organising a Summer Course each year. This is our main event each year. We also organised Spring Courses for a few years. But that was before beBEC (Belgium BEST Engineering Competition) was born. Sinc beBEC exists we've been organising a local round in Louvain-la-Neuve and sending the best teams to the national round, which we always help organise in a certain way.
Other non usual events we organised include the Lowlands Meeting - which we were once the record holder of the number of participants attending -, the General Assembly in 1997, the Presidents Meeting in 2003, and other workshops,...
We also did numerous Cultural Exchanges. The last one was in 2008 with Timisoara, it was a great succes :p
ATHENS is an european exchange program, as is BEST, but more focused on academic content. The principle goal of the Network is to facilitate the exchange of students, professors and researchers among the major European technological universities and to participate together under European technological development and training programmes. (ATHENS program website)
As Catholic University of Louvain (UCL) is a member of ATHENS, whenever an ATHENS course is organised in our university our LBG is taking care of the exchange students as we would do for BEST courses participants. Eventhough this is not required by ATHENS program, it brings participants an added value to their intensive week in Louvain-la-Neuve. We make them discover our town and country if time permits.
In Louvain-la-Neuve we work in tight collaboration with our faculty, Louvain School of Engineering. That's why we've been able since several years to give to students the opportunity to make the BEST courses they attended recognised in their study program.