Organized by the South West Hungarian Engineering Cluster, a special, cheerful, and meaningful workshop took place in Pécs, at Pollack Beach, in the summer of 2025. The aim of the meeting was to provide an informal setting for SWHEC Teaching Scholarship teachers to meet each other and SWHEC staff and management, and to discuss the future of the scholarship program together.
Three scholarship-winning teachers participated in the event: Tamás Pap from the Baranya County SZC Zipernowsky Károly Technical College, and Tamás Petes and Roland Kontra from the Kaposvár SZC Eötvös Loránd Technical College and Boarding School.
Cooking together, sharing experiences
The team-building program involved preparing a cellar stew. Cooking together was a real community experience; not only did the cellar stew turn out delicious, but the process of preparing it also brought many moments of joy. The distribution of tasks created a particularly good atmosphere, as everyone was given a playful name: the “taster” supervised the flavors, the “meat magician” chopped the ingredients, the “decorator” folded the napkins, while the “table setting wizard” set the table, and everyone happily took on their tasks. The joint work created a relaxed atmosphere in which it was easy to engage in conversation on both professional and personal topics. The teachers shared their honest experiences of the current challenges of the scholarship and made many useful suggestions on how to promote it. The cluster is striving to implement as many of these as possible, for example by inviting scholarship teachers to the SWHEC’s popular benchmarking meetings, thereby giving educators a more direct insight into the cluster’s operations and introducing them to modern technologies used by engineering companies. They provide opportunities to participate in the Industry Days exhibition, where teachers can build professional relationships with companies showcasing the latest technologies. It is often the case that during company visits, companies focus primarily on presenting their factories, with less focus on HR, even though this is at least as important and relevant information for students when visiting their potential future workplace. Teachers find it very useful and motivating when companies talk openly about their internal operations, such as salary opportunities, the working environment, and career paths, and it is particularly credible when a former vocational student shares their personal experiences, their own career path, and their current professional successes. The SWHEC aims to put these recommendations into practice, thereby strengthening the effectiveness of the scholarship program and raising awareness of cluster members.
Connections that strengthen the scholarship program
One of SWHEC’s primary goals is to encourage more people to apply for scholarship programs in the future. The end-of-summer development workshop proved that community experiences and informal conversations can greatly contribute to participants feeling a stronger connection to the program and the SWHEC, and to them authentically recommending it to others based on their own experiences. The future plan is for the SWHEC to organize similar events on a regular basis with the aim of maintaining informality, foster good relationships, and create a supportive community where engineering companies, cluster management, and educators can easily exchange information on a single platform, thereby contributing to the success of the engineering career model.
The event thus provided not only a gastronomic experience but also valuable professional networking opportunities for all participants. The SWHEC is confident that in the future, even more teachers and students will learn about and take advantage of the opportunities offered by SWHEC scholarships.
01 Sept 2025