Soon after his CEU Summer University course ended, Cristian Lupsa, a participant of the “Funding Journalism in the Digital Age” course posted this on Facebook to his fellow participants:
“Hey all. Hope you're still running on the Budapest buzz! I still am.”
Lupsa, editor of Decat o Revista (DoR), a Romanian quarterly magazine, was one of the twenty media practitioners from 16 countries including Nepal, Mexico, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Japan, Turkey and Syria, among others, to attend the course.
Similar metaphors that participants used to describe the great adrenaline rush of the summer school experience range from “a potent capsule”, “a shot in the arm for my research” to some milder ones comparing their course to a “gentle rain, the knowledge sank in effortlessly” or an “incubator of ideas.”
In June and July of 2018, SUN welcomed 378 participants from 85 countries in sixteen courses, among them close to fifty former and current CEU students as well.
In the research-intensive track of the program, ten interdisciplinary teams of cognitive science, philosophy, history and philosophy of science, political science, and sociology, among others, offered courses presenting cutting-edge research at the intersection of these fields.
“I feel like I did a semester-long seminar on laws in the span of a few days. Very enriching,” says one of the participants of “The History and Metaphysics of the Concept of Laws of Nature.”
Six training and policy-related courses covered a wide range of subjects and issues for professionals such as mediation theory and skills, how to respond to the severe crisis journalism is facing in the digital age; how recent advances in information and communication technologies are empowering decision-makers in environmental policy; exploring management and teaching aspects of life-long learning, and the discussion of effective and appropriate application of the precautionary principle in environmental governance.
Teaching and learning, however, were not confined to the classrooms. The ‘buzz’ continued after classes ended, often late into the night:
“Peers and faculty both suggested some interesting avenues to explore and analyses to run. These conversations occurred in response to my own student talk as well as during social events with the class," said a participant of the “Thinking about the Possible” course.
The many friendships and networks that started in the summer of 2018 at CEU will not be confined to space and time spent here either. “We ended up making life-long professional and personal networks with both faculty and fellow students. Thank you so much for this opportunity,” wrote a participant of the “Constitution-building in Africa” course.