Student clubs and activities have been a tradition with all major universities. Designed to facilitate self-governance, charity and career awareness, they have an important social mission and are joined based on interest. But whatever their purpose, they offer their members ways to unfold their potential as contributors to common cause, giving skills to put on a resume. Here are the endeavors ICEF students unite for and how they work.
Student clubs and activities have been a tradition with all major universities. Designed to facilitate self-governance, charity and career awareness, they have an important social mission and are joined based on interest. But whatever their purpose, they offer their members ways to unfold their potential as contributors to common cause, giving skills to put on a resume. Here are the endeavors ICEF students unite for and how they work.
Student Council
ICEF Student Council (SC) – a form of student self-governance that started as a movement and has evolved into a student body with its own procedure for election, debates, committees, and large projects – consists of two elected representatives from each class. SC has as its primary goal promoting the academic life at ICEF and facilitating dialogue between students, faculty, and administrators.
"At ICEF, Student Council has been uniquely successful making the student life more vibrant and comfortable on campus and beyond. The name “student council” embraces a variety of processes relating to both academic and extracurricular activities. These include, among others, adjusting paper marking deadlines, development and operation of Telegram bot with functions such as ‘contact the administration’ and ‘view class schedule updates’, arranging recreational activities (tennis tournaments, joint trips to ice rink, paintball, art therapy), and negotiating set lunch time. All this is done by SC members to make the student life even better!" says third-year student Leia Sherman who chairs ICEF Student Council, and first-year student Ekaterina Bezzubenko, ICEF Student Council member.
Tutor community
Invited to be tutors are students in the second, third or fourth year of study, who adhere to active lifestyle, are responsible, have higher levels of empathy and can offer life and work experience. Tutoring began at ICEF in 2010 as a student initiative. Now, 13 years after receiving its first members, the tutor community forms an integral part of student services. Every year the community receives applications from more than one hundred volunteers. Tutor applicants are selected through a multistage procedure that includes the interview by the administration. The selected candidates are then grouped into the teams of three, each of which is assigned to a group of first-year students.
“Tutors are freshmen’s second family, helping new cohorts to integrate into the student life. We help with studies and bring information about electives and activities available on campus. We take care that students get assistance and advice, and there are discussion meetings that we hold throughout the year in various formats. We deliver exam preparation classes and generally prepare our first-year students for their academic journey. Whether the relationship is mentorly or friendly, it stays and many of the mentees continue to turn to us in their second or third year,” says Alexandra Gorshkova, a 4-year student and member of the Tutor Council.
Keystone
Keystone is a non-profit platform designed to connect students and graduates to industry professionals. In doing so, Keystone helps to kickstart careers in finance.
“How do we connect students and businesses? By partnering some of the leading financial companies and investment and commercial banks – B1, P&G, Arthur Consulting, Kept, Tinkoff, Sber, Ozon, to name a few. We invite their lead experts to host our case competitions, HR/CV sessions, lectures and thematic meetings. Along with that, there is the annual Keystone Career Forum. The latest one was held in March 2023 and was contributed by 13 employers. It was a one-day event with as many as fifty HR/CV sessions and two evening sessions hosted by Sber and Tinkoff. The Keystone Career Forum 2023 was visited by a total of 800 students.
In addition to organizing student events, our team maintains social media pages. We post job vacancies, communicated to us by lead financial companies, on VK and Telegram channel, and there’s a new section coming soon which we hope our subscribers will find useful,” report second-year students Yulia Atroshenko and Polina Yaskina who co-manage Keystone.
ICEF Crew
At ICEF, active, busy learning life is complemented by no less vibrant experiences that take place outside the classroom. These experiences happen largely thanks to ICEF Crew – a community of enterprising students who have been organizing various thematic events since 2006. Notable events include Student Initiation, ICEF Birthday, and Spring Party. ICEF Crew events follow different formats, each with its unique entertainment programme, supported through PR and SMM campaigns and offering interactive venues, photo zones and contests, with music played by Moscow’s famous DJs. Gifts and exciting prizes are kindly provided by ICEF Сrew partnering businesses.
“ICEF Crew strives to create a vibrant, inclusive community with venues for students to celebrate their academic success. These venues extend student communication beyond the classroom, being an integral part of life on campus. Every event is much-awaited, and some students get the chance to join ICEF Crew as organizers," says third-year student Alisa Kokina, ICEF Crew President.
