voilà, Montpellier

And here it is, live and (in)direct from the south coast of France, some words from another great sutroforian...Phil.

My experiences of Montpellier so far have been mixed. Before I went there I was quite worried that I wouldn't be able to follow the courses, as I did not speak french except for a few words. However I saw that as an extra challenge and thus opportunity, plus I though the change of climate would more than compensate for this.  When I asked  the SUTROFOR coordinator for Montpellier about my chances to get accepted there and eventually graduate as well, he was very optimistic and encouraged me. When I told him that I speak some Spanish too, he assured me that there would be no problems.
Without taking a preparatory language course, I joined the preparatory module "Foret tropicale humide" in French Guyana. This trip has been very different from the trips to Sarawak and Tanzania, because it was a little introduction to tropical forests in general. "What are the tropics? What is tropical forest? What is soil? What is so special about tropical forestry?" At first I did not really understand anything they said  as everything was french, however since my background is forestry and CPH gives an ample overview of tropical forest issues, I could actually follow the courses. The first 2 weeks we had courses that were held in a classroom on the CIRAD campus, paired with small excursions, day trips etc. to illustrate. I experienced this as a very tangible and holistic way of introducing students to the tropical forest context. For me it was very frustrating, as I had heard about the greatest part of the course matter and understood, but was not able to ask questions and take it beyond the introductory level, especially in the face of the apparent expertise of the lecturers.
The third week was data collection for a group project and week 4 analysis and presentation of the results. It was a very relaxed (in terms of workload) month and in my opinion also had the purpose of giving the group a good start together and leveling the background for those few who had never heard about all these things. French Guyana is an incredible french colony, with astonishing nature on the one hand and European style infrastructure on the other hand. There are no parasites in the rivers and no malaria or dengue etc around. I like to describe it as a tropical Disneyland.

Directly after Guyana courses started with usual introduction week (i was told) and after that modules are organised weekly, i.e. one 1,5 ECTS module e.g. Agroforestry = one week of exclusively AF courses and the exam later on. They invite many guest speakers often from CIRAD, INRA or IRD, etc that lecture on a specific topic within the subject.

SUTROFORs are part of the french Master 2 course "GEEFT" so there are no special courses for us and we just go with the rest of the course. However, the SUTROFOR 2nd year courses are not exactly the same as the GEEFTs (in fact we just have to do less) and I took me an awfully long time to find out which courses I needed to take, as I had heard many subjects in CPH already and there was conflicting information of the SUTROFOR.eu and GEEFT website about the SUTROFOR courses. Unfortunately my coordinator wouldn't even mind my constant reminders, requests and visits to his office. After this had been going on for almost 4 weeks he finally gave me the information that he is not responsible for that. :D
After contacting the GEEFT coordinator it turned out to be a matter of printing an excel sheet with the correct info.

So a big downside of Montpellier is that there is no help in organising your studies there, so sometimes I didn't even realise that I had not understood sth., or failed to ask if this is different for SUTOFORS. But some things seem to be unorganisable. There are no dates for the exams, for example.The AF exam was announced 2 weeks before, which makes it a bit hard to plan ahead. However, there is also some flexibility, e.g. I was allowed to make a distance exam.

The Master thesis will take the shape of an "internship" at a company or research institute that provides guidance, supervision and some sort of a payment as this is a french law. Although it is still somewhat obscure, it seems like there is still some freedom in deciding what, how and how long you want to do your thesis internship. We will finish courses in mid February to mid march (depending on electives) and have until September for the thesis.

Summarising the school, it offers high quality but relatively low level education. Where you had to read a bunch of papers to prepare for a class and discuss the problems in more depth in CPH (although still not enough for my taste), you just come to class here and listen to a good summary of the topic. But the level does not stay behind because of students or teachers incapacity but because it is simply not possible to discuss REDD or governance in 3 hours in a way that prepares us to work these issues later.

Of course I still suffer from my rudimentary french that by now allows me to ask questions and make comments, but that is often misunderstood or taken as a sign of me not understanding the topic, e.g. " No Philipp, you see, trees sequester carbon in their wood...". Unluckily the french students are not too eager on asking questions either, so what I mostly see at school is a good summary of things I already heard. Montpellier for me with background in natural sciences from forestry and some social sciences from CPH is rather a first year institution (although I guess I don't know the other criteria).
The language is not really a problem for exams I believe, as international students get an extra 30min for exams and can answer in English. However I have only taken one exam so far and i don't know how it turned out. Also this rule does not seem to be firmly rooted because some lecturers didn't know about it, seemed reluctant or made other suggestions. I did write some reports for group work and these have to be in french. This means you will pass it as it is group work and the others will work more if you cant. Here your level of french just determines how much "dead weight" you are for your group. Although writing in English and translating afterwards works fine, organising the group work, discussing focus etc and especially making sure your group sticks to the plan and a new last minute plan is not evolving without you is very hard.

Other than this, I love living in Montpellier. I went to school by bike in t-shirt, the french students are really open and friendly. They included me when I wasn't even able to talk with them and helped me a lot learning the language. I actually share a flat with 5 other french students from my campus. Speaking of the campus, it is very small and nice, the whole class (GEEFT+SUTROFOR) is about 25 people and has courses together except for group work etc. I love the french way of enjoying good things, especially their eating culture. Although 2 hours lunch break seems a bit of an exaggeration sometimes it reflects the importance of having enough time to prepare good food and enjoy it without any pressure.
The city centre is really beautiful reminding me a bit of Venice, just somewhat more Spanish with small alleys in pastel colors and a lovely atmosphere.
I pay about 200€ for my shared flat. In fact I even share a room, but there are standard student residences of ca 15m2 for 200-300€.
The Mediterranean sea is half an hour from the city, but i haven't been there yet. Nightlife is confined to bars that close around 1 during the week and 3 on weekends. There is some good music places and Mitch told me the opera is only 3,50.
Ok before I tell you about cheese wrapping paper I will call this a little account of my 2nd year so far. Contact me if you have more specific questions.

A plus
Phil

Prifysgol Bangor

All right, a few words on Bangor and some of my impressions being here as a second year sutrofor student. I'll also try to cover some aspects on a bit of everything, so academics, the place, the uni, etc.

My student life revolves around the School of Environment, Natural Resources and Geography (SENRGY), located at the Thoday building below the main university hub (like below the hill) but closer to Bangor's High Street (one of the bussier streets). Across the street is the Deniol library, where (as you know by now) you'll be spending some fun quality time too. About Thoday, I'll just say it has a focal point at a common room equiped with some tables and chairs, all the hot water you need (you supply your tea and coffee), a mini-fridge and a microwave oven; for some reason, the building also has lots of doors (irrelevant comment, just had to say it). It's convenient to be able to bring your lunch and keep the tea flowing, but quite frankly I miss a student cantine here; there are however a bunch of commercial food places nearby. About the School I'll say it's a very friendly and relaxed atmosphere, lecturers are nice and very approachable and they know their subject. There's plenty of talks here and there by resident and invited lecturers, not only forestry related but other fields like conservation and things going on in North Wales, and since the school is relative small it's easy to hear about them and attend. Makes for nice alternative informative sessions. Sutrofors are taught with the Agroforestry postgraduate course, so altogether we're 10 students sharing the same classes (also international). There's two main courses running, you can check the details in the sutrofor page. Overall the focus is definitely on agroforestry and the subject is covered by multiple lecturers with different styles and approaches. Some have an agricutural background, others are foresters, some are into livelihoods and others dig systems views and/or local knowledge, some like the temperate areas and others love the tropics (overall there's more focus on the tropics), and everyone is pretty much a tree fan. The rhythm is quite variable but surely keeps you bussy. Oh yes, grading is based on reports and presentations. There's also a parallel class on research methods, which you share with pretty much all other masters students, so much bigger class (nice). It's a one-day-per-week class, which covers (very quickly) as the name would suggest all aspects of research. A bit redundant maybe for some of us in our second year, but good refresher and a few new things. Some days are in class, others in the field (one day was a voluntary trip to participate in rhododendron control in the mountains, cool even with rain). The class also covers GIS and remote sensing, a couple good classes and computer practicals on that, also based on some field collected data. Also worth mentioning that the school organizes additional field excursions which make for a enjoyable day out in the nearby mountains and farms. Ah yeah, and I almost forgot, classes here run until december (a few days before x-mas) and then you're off to focus on your thesis. You can attend more classes if you wish, that is the agroforestry courses (the masters taught postgraduate with the other students) keep running for a couple more months, but you're basically on to your thesis. Must be said, at the beginning there was some confusion as to when we were supposed to hand in our thesis, first it was said may, now its september, slight difference!, although we're welcome to finish early. I dunno how it will be next year, would be good to ask as this is an ongoing general discussion among all sutrofor institutions.


Regarding thesis subjects, it's notable that topics are pretty much unlimited as are locations. Now this can be good in terms of flexibility (not so helpful when you are undecided). You are not particularly obliged to do something within Agroforestry, although of course it's in your interest and AF is quite a broad subject anyway. Researchers in the school (SENRGY) have broad fields of interest. Asides from the whole agriculture-agroforestry-forestry spectrum, there are a lot of excellent lecturers involved with conservation or rivers-catchments or geospatial analysis for example, and one current AF classmate of mine is gona work with a supervisor (from another school) to look into rice genetics. If anyone wants to really get more specific, drop me an email and I'll send you the list of research opportunities from all faculty members (the one we got his year) for you to browse. It's also worth mentioning that location is also completely open, it can be North Wales, for which there is a lot of interesting research going on, e.g. the school has a silvopastoral experimental station in Henfaes, is involved with the Treborth botanical garden, and next building is the Environment Centre Wales on a partnership with the U.K.'s Centre for Ecology and Hydrology. Of course, tropical foresters as we are, north Wales rain is tolerable but would be nicer to feel on a warm climate. Options to work in tropical countries are there. Big consideration of course, is the funding. Some researchers may have some available, but as you know that is highly variable. You are obviously encouraged to look for it and they are willing to help, but it comes down to your own initiative. It's worth mentioning the great links of Bangor with the World Agroforestry Centre (ICRAF) and also with CATIE in Costa Rica. Specially with ICRAF, there have been lots of available options to work for/with them in projects around the world, and that means funding and collaboration. Of course, it depends on what projects are running at the moment (you adapt to the larger project, not the other way around), but it seems there's always something going on! I can tell you that the 3 of us here are most likely going to go this way =).

And very briefly now (feel free to ask me more details), there's lots of activities going on in the University. There's over a hundred societies running, be it sports (there's some very nice infrastructure for sports), academic, community, hobbies, performing, outdoors, social, etc. check them out in the student's union site to get an idea. And finally, about North Wales, it really is a beautiful place. The Snowdonia national park is just a step away and the mountains are amazing. There´s lots of quaint Welsh towns around, a beautiful coastline, and yes, lots of sheep to dot the otherwise grassy landscape. I love it.