Highlights 2018

• The foundation stone of Arcadahallen was laid in January. The unique eight-storey building on Arcada's campus combines student housing with state-of-the-art sports facilities. Building a sports hall on top of an apartment building has never been done in Finland before. The student housing is a joint venture together with Hanken School of Economics.
  
   
• The annual recruitment and networking event My Future Work attracted a record number of companies and organisations to Arcada. Some fifty exhibitors and about 600 students participated. This year, caompanies and organisations from Sweden participated for the first time.

Arcada and SeaFocus deepened their cooperation as Arcada became an official academic partner of SeaFocus in February. Within the framework of the cooperation the partners planned to develop the Intelligence Hunt concept. Intelligence Hunt® is a SeaFocus project promoting the maritime industry as an attractive career path to university students, and providing maritime industry and its stakeholders a magnificent possibility to get out-of-the-box solutions and ideas.

The Finnish Education Evaluation Centre (FINEEC) approved Arcada's quality assurance system for the next six years. The audit group concluded that a common and well-grounded quality culture exists and constitutes a good basis for the quality development of activities at Arcada. The review empahsised that, the governance, information, support and follow-up on research, development and innovation activities had improved since the last audit.

Arcada's emergency care students came in second in the Finnish championships in resuscitation. The team consisted of Ellen Ahlström, Pia Halavakoski-Pråhl, Oskar Snellman, Freddy Österberg and Mattias Lindberg. In the competition CPR is given to an adult and the teams are judged on their performance. In addition to the actual resuscitation judges consider management, communication, division of labour and aftercare.

In May, Arcada's new rector and CEO Professor Mona Forsskåhl took office. Forsskåhl has broad experience of teaching, research and leadership in various higher education institutions. Before coming to Arcada she held a professorship in Nordic languages at the University of Helsinki. She took over after Henrik Wolff, Arcada's first rector, who held the position for 23 years.

Arcada and Novia formalised their coperation within education. From the autumn semester, it became possible for students to choose courses from the other UAS. Courses are offered in technology, business administration, and social and health care. The cooperation offers students the opportunity to broaden their networks and profile their degrees in new ways.

Just in time for the new academic year the so called Chat square at the heart of the main building went through a major face-lift. Students and employees were involved in the planning and the design was then chosen to promote creative, functional, flexible study environments and sustainability.

Arcada's plans to go ahead with an activity-based work environment was kick-started in August. The working group leading the way has visited several work environments that adhere to the activity-based principle. This way of working requires a completely new working culture within the organisation and new ways of doing the work. The key words for the project at Arcada are flexibility, communication, variation, accessibility, well-being and innovation.

Arcada's and Finlandssvensk Idrott arranged their joint event Idrottskarusellen (the sport carousel) attracting 1200 pupils for the first time. The versatile sports day for primary school pupils is one of the biggest of its kind. Nearly sixty prospective sports instructors were involved in the day and were responsible for the planning and implementation of the activities.

Arcada's production lab was transformed into a showroom for the international plastic company K.D Feddersen. The company chose to showcase some of its machines for plastic processing at the Arcada, including an injection molding machine and associated equipment. Through the collaboration, the possibilities for the prospective engineers are strengthened and in addition, the contact with the plastics industry is expanded, as companies have the opportunity to visit Arcada to test the state of the art equipment.

The idea competition Arcada Mindventures sparked great interest among students at Arcada. The competition was arranged for the second time and this year it was Myles Klynhout who took home the prize with his language learning application 'GoConVo'. Arcada Mindventures encourages entrepreneurship among students, as they have the opportunity to present and receive feedback on their ideas by a jury consisting of successful alumni.

The fundraising campaign of Tomorrow's Heroes - Made by Arcada exceeded its goal with fund raised totalling 6.2 million euros. The campaign phase of the fundraising ended in December. The fantastic outcome was the result of dedicated work as well as incredible support from companies, foundations, associations, staff, alumni, students, the external campaign committee and other partners. Arcada's fundraising continues.