The University of Bielsko-Biala Welcome Point is a special project created by the International Relations Office of the University of Bielsko-Biala in Poland, within the framework of the Polish National Agency for Academic Exchange programme Welcome to Poland.

The project’s full name is University of Bielsko-Biala – Your Friendly Space. The project aims to make the university, the city, and the country a welcoming and friendly space for visitors from all over the world. This includes exchange students, foreign employees, and participants in international cooperation programmes.

The main goal of the project is increasing of the capabilities of the University of Bielsko-Biala concerning the process of admissions and serving the students and academic staff from abroad, and thus, making the University a friendly space for science activity, leisure, and intercultural integration. In accordance with that, the following specific  objectives have been assumed:

1. Increasing competences of the staff involved in serving the foreigners.
2. Organisational preparation of the University to serving foreigners.
3. Organisation of a place dedicated to serving foreigners in the form of Welcome Point.

The goals above shall be realized by:

• Training support of the staff, especially in the area of soft skills and so-called cultural intelligence, that is necessary to maintain effective communication in a multicultural academic society and create an attitude of openness.
• Preparing informative materials in foreign languages, including practical information concerning functioning at the University and living in the city.
• Preparing an architectonic project of a service place and employing there an employee capable of communicating in English, preparing and implementation of an integration programme.

Implementation of the Project will help to increase the level of services offered to international visitors and to increase their level of satisfaction during their studies or work at the University, which in the long term will result in increasing the number of pre-graduate and graduate students, as well as foreign staff.

The overall value of the project is 230 365,00 PLN, of which 177 295,00 PLN is co-financed by the European Social Fund.

The Welcome Point project was implemented from 01.05.2022 to 30.04.2023. Throughout this time, the infrastructure has been installed, staff training and official project events were held, while the international visitors were welcomed.

A touchable effect of the Welcome Point project is a part of the public access area on the fourth floor of the building L, where a Welcome Point space has been arranged. Cosy sofas and chairs invite for a moment of relax and a computer dedicated for the foreign students facilitates going through the necessary formalities. As a dominant of space, there is a wall painted with black paint suitable for writing. There, a number of welcoming inscriptions have been written in multiple languages. The first of them was „Witamy” – “Welcome” written in Polish by the HM Rector, dr hab. inż. Jacek Nowakowski, prof. ATH during the official opening of the Welcome Point, on 30^th of November 2022. Soon, other inscriptions, in different languages, followed to appear. Foreign visitors of the Welcome Point are asked to add greetings in their own language and as such a multi-lingual collection of greetings is being made.

Welcome Point are also the people, employees of the UBB, whose task is to facilitate all the aspects of the foreign visitors at the UBB, in Bielsko-Biała and in Poland – as much as possible. Besides guidance through the university procedures, they offer their support also in matters less directly linked to the university, such as the city guided tour with telling its history, support with the public transportation system, help with adapting oneself to the Polish culture.

Welcome Point means also events, organized throughout the academic year 2022/2023 as a part of the project. There was a cycle of thematic cultural meetings organized, covering the subjects of: visual arts (November 2022), holiday traditions and customs (January 2023), and music (April 2023). Those events were aimed to both present specific aspects of the Polish culture to our foreign guests and to let them present their own culture to the Polish part of our academic community.

Last but not least, Welcome Point consists as well on this website which is intended to gather in one place all the most important information for our guests from abroad.

If you have any questions or would like support during your stay at the University of Bielsko-Biala, the Welcome Point staff is always available to help. We invite you to contact us.