The academic success of international students is important to us. And because many of them will be living and studying in Germany for the first time, the University of Jena wants to offer them the support they need.

If you have already studied abroad yourself, you will appreciate good support and an introduction to the academic system and life in a new university city during the first few weeks of your stay. Do you remember when you started your studies? Then you may know how exciting the first day in a new city can be, how difficult it can be to find your way around and get to know your fellow students.

Yes, basically all students, who are enrolled at the university for the current semester, can become a Welcome Buddy.?

The only condition is that you are familiar with Jena and speak good German (at least B1 level!). Furthermore, you should speak English to a similar level, as some students will come to Jena with little or no knowledge of German.

As a Welcome Buddy, you are mainly a contact person for the new international students and help with their arrival in Jena, the start of their studies at the university, and their first steps in Jena.

Usually, Welcome Buddies support up to two mentees in the winter semester and one mentee in the summer semester.

You are a contact person and communicator and do not have to know everything and should not take over the whole management. The Welcome Buddy programme is about “helping students to help themselves”, as the students have to find their own way as independent students and adults even after your start support. You can and should always refer them to other existing support services and people in the respective subjects (e.g. student counselling, introductory days, Erasmus coordinators, etc.).

Important tasks as a Welcome Buddy are e.g.:

• ? Pick up from the train station or bus station in Jena
• ? Support with enrolment at the 欧洲杯投注地址_明升体育-竞彩足球比分推荐 Office
• ? Support with the signing of contracts in student residences or with private landlords
• ? Support at the citizen service (registration office)
• ? Support with opening an bank account, paying semester fees
• ? Support with registration at the computer centre
• ? Help with timetabling
• ? General support with settling in and orientation in Jena and at the university
• ? Support with making appointments at the immigration office later in the semester
• ? Support with communication difficulties

What are no tasks of Welcome Buddies?

• ? Vouching for international students
• ? Signing contracts or similar for international students
• ? Passing on your own log-in data
• ? Making financial advance payments for appointments
• ? Taking over the entire conversation at appointments

Communication and limits

Please also remember that communication is essential. For example, if you cannot meet your mentee personally at the train station, it is important that you communicate this to your mentee to avoid misunderstandings and false expectations, and to help them if necessary to still find their way to their room without any problems. Of course, the same applies to other areas. Be sure to tell them clearly and explicitly what you can and cannot do. You are a volunteer mento,r not a professional, and we are very grateful for this! If it gets to be too much for you because of other responsibilities, please contact us.

The Welcome Buddy programme of the 欧洲杯投注地址_明升体育-竞彩足球比分推荐 Office is available to all new international students at the University, regardless of whether they are starting with a DSH course (German Language for Admission to Higher Education), are coming to Jena for guest studies or as a degree-seeking student. The students come from all over the world and (almost all of them) speak German or English. Participation in the Welcome Buddy programme is not obligatory for students.

The activities as a Welcome Buddy are voluntary and are unpaid. All active buddies are given a certificate at the end of the arrival period. Moreover, you can receive further intercultural training free of charge, for which you obtain a certificate of participation.?You might be able to expand your foreign language skills. In any case, you will be acquainted with students from all around the world and thus gain intercultural experience. Quite often, you will also experience deep gratitude for your support. Who knows maybe you will re-discover Jena and the University in this way, and even make friends for life!

You register online here?de. Please be sure to indicate when you will be in Jena (with the exact day if possible!). If something should change at short notice, feel free to write us an e-mail at any time.

As soon as we have processed your registration, you will be sent a welcome email with more information to confirm your registration (please take into consideration that that might take a couple of days). In this email, you will also be informed about upcoming dates for?training to prepare you for your activities as a mentor. Please participate in one of the offered training courses. We will send you a registration link for the training courses by e-mail.

As of (the end of) August or the end of March until the beginning of the next lecture period, we will try to find a mentor for each new international student. For this, the mentee's date of arrival and your own availability at this time are the most important criteria. Only then can we try to assign you suitably according to the department and language skills. If this should not be possible, we hope that you will understand. If you are studying medicine or law, we will always only assign you to students from your department. When we have found a buddy for each mentee, we will send you both a so-called "matching email" with the contact data.

Welcome Buddy training
All buddies participate in a training course. You may (but do not have to) participate in several training courses, since the dates and procedures can change each semester. The training courses also serve buddies to get to know each other. In addition, experienced buddies can share their knowledge with new ones. You can find the current dates here: Trainings?de

Welcome Buddy Handbook
In the Welcome Buddy handbookpdf,?1?mb?·?de, you will find all the information you need for your activities. This guideline is updated each semester. In the handbook, you will also find important contact persons, addresses, and office hours. The check list right at the front is a particularly good aid since all of the steps are shown in the correct sequence. You can obtain the handbook in printed form during the Welcome Buddy training course or during office hours at our office. Apart from that, you can also download it as a PDF file from the website. We update the handbook each February and August and are grateful for your suggestions for improvement.

Newsletter
Welcome Buddies who have been active for one or several semesters and have lots of practical experience with mentoring often do not participate in the training course every semester. We recommend looking at the handbook though. And in addition, we send out a newsletter in March and September of each year. It contains the new features or changes (if necessary, also once more from the previous semester), as well as all relevant dates for the upcoming semester.

Intercultural training courses
The 欧洲杯投注地址_明升体育-竞彩足球比分推荐 Office organizes intercultural training courses which are open to all students at the University, but are particularly geared towards internationally mobile students and buddies/mentors. The training courses take place each year in April/May and in October/November. You will receive an invitation in due time.?

We generally assign two mentees per semester to each Welcome Buddy. Depending on the number of active buddies and the arriving international students, this number can vary from one to four. There was even one summer semester when we had to put off buddies for the next winter because we had more active mentors than international students who wanted mentoring. Ultimately, you must decide for yourself how much time you have for mentoring and how many mentees you think you can support. You can inform us each semester of the maximum number you can handle.

In the winter semester, the Welcome Buddies provide support for the period between the last week of September and one week after the beginning of the lecture period, and in the summer semester, for approx. three weeks around the beginning of lectures.

You can expect to spend about 10 hours per mentee. However, the workload can vary widely. It starts with how many questions your mentee may have, possibly even before they arrive, or whether they are already well prepared for their stay in Jena and were able to find answers to most of their questions before contacting you. While some mentees take care of much of their business alone or were able to get a room through the?Studierendenwerk without any problem, other international students have problems with finding a room, opening a bank account or other difficulties, and are then very appreciative of your support. Some things can also be taken care of as a group if you have several mentees, so that this might allow you to save time.

1. Use the Welcome Buddy handbook. You will find the most important information there.
2. Also you can find all the important information about enrolment on this website: Studienstart 欧洲杯投注地址_明升体育-竞彩足球比分推荐?de
3. Get advice at the WelcomeCafé in the 欧洲杯投注地址_明升体育-竞彩足球比分推荐 Centre. The WelcomeCafé is run by experienced international students and takes place 2-3 weeks before the start of lectures.?

If you have any questions or problems, you can of course contact the coordination team at any time:

• email: ib-mentoring@uni-jena.de
• phone: 03641/ 9 401530

Please try to make contact at least two times per e-mail. If you still have not received any answer after one week or if you get an error message, and you do not have any e-mails in your spam folder, please send an e-mail with all of the information to: ib-mentoring@uni-jena.de. We will check what the problem may be and contact you again afterwards.

Please write an email to ib-mentoring@uni-jena.de and inform us of this. We will then pass on the information.

We would be happy if you still want to be available as a Welcome Buddy.

Sometimes an unexpected appointment can come up. Or your mentees receive their visa later than expected and must delay their planned arrival. If you therefore cannot be in Jena for the planned date of arrival,?please be sure to inform your mentees and give them instructions by e-mail, e.g. on how to get to the student residence. In some cases, it may help to recommend taking a taxi and to have enough cash for this. Otherwise, please send precise and accurate directions with links for the bus or tram schedules, instructions for the required tickets etc.

If you have the impression that picking up in person is required or if you already agreed to be there but have now been held up, you can try to ask a friend or acquaintance to pick them up for you.?

If all of this does not work, please inform us as soon as possible by e-mail. We will then try to find another buddy who can pick up the international student or even take over the entire mentoring. However, please consider that at this time, the other buddies will also be quite busy. Even if we succeed in assigning the mentee to another buddy, this can possibly cause confusion.

You should definitely be in Jena shortly after their arrival and be able to meet them, otherwise you will not be able to fulfil your role as a Welcome Buddy reasonably. Please inform us immediately if your circumstances should change at short notice; ideally, always before you have been assigned to mentees.

If there are any changes that may affect your participation in the programme, please let us know immediately: ib-mentoring@uni-jena.de?

It is often the case that your mentees study different subjects than you. You must then tell your mentees that you are not responsible for academic counselling and are not able to offer this kind of help (in most cases), in order to prevent false expectations and conflicts. However, you can refer your mentees to various Universitys services. In doing so, the type of study programme of your mentee is significant:

Guest students can be referred to the Erasmus coordinator or the subject-specific course guidance for each study programme.

Degree-seeking students can also be referred to the subject-specific course guidance. Some questions can also already be answered during the Orientation Days. The subject-specific student representative committees (Fachschaft) can also often provide assistance. Furthermore, the 欧洲杯投注地址_明升体育-竞彩足球比分推荐 Office for undergraduate degree-seeking students also offers the option of?subject-specific mentoring by students and lecturers from their own study programme. If you are interested in this, please read more hereExternal link.

DSH course participants should contact Mrs?Cornelia DwarsExternal link.

Yes, supporting at least one student as part of the Welcome Buddy programme is a compulsory component of the module "My Voluntary Activities" as part of the?"Career Planning Certificate Programme" (ZertiKap)External link. If you support incoming students for at least two semesters in the Welcome Buddy programme, you can even cover the complete module with the certificate we will issue as proof of this support. Please note, however, that due to the high number of new students at the beginning of the winter semester, we usually assign two mentees to each buddy.

No. In due course, generally towards the end of a semester, we will send you an e-mail asking you whether you want to be a Welcome Buddy again in the upcoming semester. If you would like to do so, simply let us know with a short e-mail. If something should change spontaneously, so that you cannot support international students or only to a limited extent, please also inform us as soon as possible in a short e-mail. If you can no longer participate or possibly only want to skip one semester, please also inform us about it by e-mail.

Simply start by maintaining regular contact with your mentees. Especially for international students, unfortunately, there are few opportunities to make contact and build long-term relationships with "local" students or students who have already been living in Jena for a longer period. Staying in contact with them can therefore already be a big step towards integration and against isolation. Particularly appointments at the Immigration Office often take place later during the course of the semester and not right at the beginningthere also, your support for filling in forms and going along to appointments is explicitly welcome.

The 欧洲杯投注地址_明升体育-竞彩足球比分推荐 Office is also happy to receive registrations for subject-specific mentoring for undergraduate degree-seeking studentsExternal link which is designed for the longer term.