Congratulations to the 2023 cohort
A unique cohort of SDC graduates was celebrated when students, families and faculty met in Middelfart. The 2023 graduates leave SDC with a degree, an international network and cultural experiences. But the cohort also has had an unusual study experience, since they mainly have studied online because of COVID-19.
“Your chosen path was not supposed to be easy”
Head of the Innovation Management programme Dmitrij Slepniov gave a speech to the graduates.
“To be honest, your chosen path for your Master’s degree was not supposed to be easy. It is never easy to do international education outside your comfort zone, far away from home, with people from a culture you do not fully understand. But on the top of all these traditional challenges of international education, you had to endure that with the extra level of complexity, extra level of difficulty, extra filter of technology you had to communicate with each other to.
I applaud you for not giving up, for persevering, for finding strength to find yourself on the other side of this challenging journey, stronger, wiser, more comfortable with complexity and uncertainty that was associated with the period,” he said.
Dean of SDC Wu Deshen, Executive Director of SDC Morten Laugesen and the student representatives also gave speeches at the graduation.
Kassandra Georges has studied Neuroscience and Neuroimaging, and during her speech she took the audience on a trip down memory lane to remember some of the most happy and challenging moments during the two years of study.
Also Mathias Jørgensen, who graduates with a double degree in Innovation Management looked back:
“I have experienced personal growth, and I feel like I am looking at a different room of people than when I met you first. And I am so glad that I have been along for that. We have also developed friendships with the world and each other and improved our professional prospects for the future. We have grown into world citizens; we adapt to people and cultures,” he said.
Pursuing a PhD and job at the Chinese market
Both graduates have planned the next step. The two years at SDC has confirmed Kassandra Georges that she will pursue a PhD position.
“My main interest is within clinical medicine, and I hope to concentrate my research on the anatomic differences between different psychiatric diseases,” she says.
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Mathias Jørgensen feels like he has just opened the China chapter, and when the world took steps towards normal, he was eager to take up the opportunity to go to China and work on his Master’s thesis and meet with his Chinese supervisor.
“When I arrived in China, got to speak Chinese, met my Chinese classmates in real life and experienced the atmosphere and culture, I got the feeling “This is how it should be”,” says Mathias Jørgensen, and he now pursues a career, where he can make use of his intercultural and innovation skills.
“My first job could be working with strategy, sales or product development, e.g. in a Danish company working on the Chinese market,” says Mathias.
