On Friday after our time at Kemira we headed to Aalto University. I should note here is where we hit our first road bump on the trip, to our surprise we have had to this point no trouble getting to and from anywhere and finding our people. We left Kemira with the with 2 instructions 13:00, Main library at Aalto University. After a little bit of conusion about which library (there is one for each department) we made it to the library early and waited until 13:00 and no one had yet come to claim the hopefully not too loud Americans out of the Library Lobby. After about another 45mins and a few quick calls we got ahold of our gracious host Jenni ( she was told we would be there at 14:30) we were on our way (Lucky that Jenni was on campus and willing to fill up more of our time) she came by the library and gave a quick rundown of what she thought we would want to see and we started walking across campus.
It wasn't long before professor van Heiningen rode up beside us on his bicycle (if you don't know him he is a UMaine professor who also spends time working with graduate students at Aalto) now that we had two well qualified tour guides we checked out Aalto's labs and pilot facilities. Though their pilot paper machine ain't got nothing on Jenness, we got a chance to see a pilot scale dissolving pulp spinner that's finished product was Rayon. We also took a visit to their forest products library, here we we hunted down a copy of "Smook Book" for the photo op.
Originally I was told that the people giving the tour would be in yellow overalls???? Questionable right?
Well turns out it's actually the coolest thing ever. Though it is closer to what we would call a jumpsuit, they are a bright golden yellow shade. Here each department has a guild and about 99% of students join one. A guild is something like an AIChE or TAPPI/PIMA mixed with fraternity or sorority life. Instead of greek letters each Guild has its own color jumpsuit. The Forest Product guild who hosted us was Yellow. A few of our hosts who had come straight from work were not wearing their Jumpsuits but a few were. We toured the student museum which was about the different guilds. We also took a look at their innovative technology center which had brainstorming rooms, a "Fat Boy" room (basically a room filled with bean bag chairs), and a live video stream going both ways with Shanghai. We walked along the water and ended our tour with a BBQ on something like a quad near the library. Somewhere in there we met up with another student tour guide Minttu and lost Professor Van Heiningen.
During the BBQ we accumulated a few more hosts including one Sakari (who we call "Sarge" due to his military rank) he managed to memorize our names and faces from the Bios that were sent out, it was impressive when he called us each by our name while introducing himself.
It was a great opportunity to really get to know the culture of their University and of Finnish people our own age. All of the students we met are on a Master's track. They go into school knowing that and intending to stay for about 5-8 years. During the summers they get jobs mostly in Mills and paper related industry. One had worked at the Kemira R&D center we visited earlier and we are hoping to see Jenni and Minttu at the SAPPI Mill on Monday. It was great to be able to compare the Co-Op experience with their program.
After what ended up being roughly 7 hours at Aalto (when the sun doesn't set it's easy to lose track of time) we headed back which brought on its own challenge. We had no arrangements on getting back and had asked our hosts about the bus which luckily left from just across the street and took us into the city. Once again our hosts proved just how amazing they were when Joni helped by talking with the bus driver when we paid for our tickets.
Later in the evening we met up with our new found friends from Aalto to get a real taste of Helsinki.They even brought a gift after we said how jealous we were of the jumpsuits (Nick Hart is modeling below)
No comments:
Post a Comment