Latest Trends seminars are a hit with MU students

MODUL University not only employs number of renowned academics on permanent and part-time faculty, but also invites guest speakers to present the ‘’Latest Trends’’ series. Held Friday afternoons throughout the semester, both students and the general public are invited to this dynamic and ever-changing series.

Students participating in this extraordinary class were able to glean both knowledge and credit for their participation. TaiAnne Marinho DeSilva and Maya Loaker were two such students, and nicely summed up the series for us. Maya had the following to say about one of her favourite classes of the semester:

‘’This course can be considered one of the most up to date and interesting ones offered by MODUL University Vienna. It consists of inviting external guests from a very broad variety of fields within the tourism industry to hold a presentation on their past and current work experiences and projects. The speakers are chosen on their expertise and experiences.

This semester, all raised the public’s attention by their enthusiasm and congeniality while communicating their main point of view on a topic. A question-and-answer session is held after the presentation, which gives students the chance to actively discuss the topic and, if desired, go further into detail. The atmosphere is inviting and friendly, which is a consequence and continuity of what MU stands for and represents.

Since it is an open course, students from all semesters are invited to attend. Even external guests are welcome, and that was noticeable during presentations where guests from Great Britain and Germany were present.

The guest speakers this semester were respectively: Selma Prodanovic, Dr Harold Goodwin, Dr Nikola Sander, Dr Wolfgang Strasdas, Dr Christian Baumgartner and Mag. (FH) Philipp A.L. Patzel. The topics presented and discussed varied from conferences and destination image and safari tourism to sustainable destination management and carbon foot-printing.

Personally, I found the session on conferences and destination image very inspiring and motivating; the speaker was interactive and it was a great start into the course. The sessions held on safari tourism and authenticity in the hotel industry showed an innovative side of tourism and were curiosity-piquing and interesting. Talking about cross-border tourism along the Danube in another session raised enthusiasm and showed the students the potential of a still-developing niche in the market.

For me, the main goal of this course is to broaden the students’ perspective on current topics and to keep them informed and up to date. Of course, that demands consistent work and research and in my opinion it is the right path to follow.''

TaiAnne summed it up like so:

''Latest Trends & Innovations was a class I attended in my second semester in spring 2011, and it it was a very attention-grabbing course. We saw many different presentations and ways of creating and presenting, which was really helpful to improve our own presentation skills.

The seminar I liked the most was the very first one held by Selma Prodanovic, as it was a pretty interesting and encouraging presentation about not giving up on our dreams and how she made her dream come true, even with a family and 2 children at home.

Also the very last one, held by Mag. (FH) Philipp A. L. Patzel, was very interesting and funny. He turned the whole presentation in something fascinating and in fact, I was pretty curious about the hotel concept of Hollmann Beletage, which is the hotel Mr. Patzel works as the general manager for.

Dr. Nikola Sander gave us some shocking facts about the population in 2050. There’s a theory that the population could grow to around 11 billion people, due to the high birth rate in the least developed countries. In contrary to this, there is another theory holding that the population could decline to 6 billion as well, as people in industrial countries focus on their career rather than on building up a family. Which one is right, we are going to know in 2050!

Another noteworthy presentation was about cross-border tourism along the Danube River. I didn’t even know the Danube River was that long and I found it pretty interesting how the countries cooperate so that tourists can travel along the Danube River without any complications. In general I can say that I took the most out of this seminar, and it was a pleasure widening my horizons with all the information shared with us.’’

Further information about this past semester's speakers can be found here: http://www.modul.ac.at/latesttrendsseminars

The next installment of the Latest Trends lecture series will begin in October 2011.