Individual counseling services for students and other aspiring university students

Career Counseling and Guidance Center (CCOC) of the Western University of Timișoara (UVT) provides services of individual career counseling students or other aspirants to university studies who need support for choosing their educational and professional path.

During the counseling sessions, aspects related to skills, abilities, personal and professional interests, the UVT educational offer and other relevant aspects will be discussed, so that the beneficiaries can make the best decision regarding their own career.

Every student or aspirant to university studies can benefit from 3 sessions of individual career counseling, offered by the UVT Career Counseling and Guidance Center.

All services offered by CCOC-UVT are free. 

To schedule a one-on-one career counseling session, interested individuals can fill out THIS FORM.

Also, the Western University of Timișoara (UVT) makes it available free of charge to all those interested psycho-vocational testing platform YTM. More details about this, HERE.

For other information, we are at your disposal at the e-mail address ccoc@e-uvt.ro. 

Discipline  "Career counseling and career guidance"

In order to develop a culture of career counseling among the students of the Western University of Timișoara (UVT), starting from the 2019-2020 academic year, the activity of professional counseling and career guidance, with the status of compulsory complementary discipline that takes place in year 1, semester 1 and is rewarded with 1 transferable study credit (according to ECTS, in addition to the 30 compulsory credits of the semester). This activity is offered to students by the UVT Career Counseling and Guidance Center (CCOC-UVT) in partnership with the UVT faculties. Student status integralist is conditioned by the promotion of the discipline Career counseling and career guidance. 

By completing this discipline, students will learn how to plan their career from the first year of studies. The objective of this discipline it is for the student to familiarize himself with his own professional interests, personal and work values, to know his individual skills and characteristics. This activity supports the development and presentation of an individual career development plan that students can monitor and modify as opportunities arise in academia or the labor market.

By doing this activity, students learn to explore their career options, formulate goals and make decisions about their future careers, thereby developing job search skills and behaviours.

Finally, following the group counseling sessions and the study of the learning resources made available by the CCOC counselors, all students create their own career development plan, which they present in an evaluation activity, based on which they also receive a study credit.

Discipline sheet Career counseling and career guidance can be consulted HERE.

Discipline report Career counseling and career guidance for the academic year 2019-2020 can be accessed HERE.

Peer to Peer Tutoring Program

Career Counseling and Guidance Center (CCOC) of UVT, with the support of UVT faculties, organizes every academic year the Peer to Peer Tutoring (P2PT) tutoring program in the West University of Timișoara, through which aims to offer UVT students in the first year of undergraduate studies educational assistance and career development services, with a focus on their integration into the university environment with the support of colleagues from older years.

Tutoring is a formal activity that aims to establish a relationship between a more experienced and informed person and a less experienced and informed one, the former having a supporting role and facilitating the personal and career development of the latter. Peer tutoring it is a particular form of tutoring, which is carried out "peer to peer", between people who belong to the same social group and hold a similar professional status. In university education, peer tutoring is a psychopedagogical intervention program in which older students provide academic and social support to younger students.

The general objective of the peer tutoring activity is to facilitate the learning and adaptation to the academic environment of the tutored students. Sthe cop implementation of the Peer to Peer Tutoring program in the Western University of Timișoara is to help the students in the first year of the bachelor's degree cycle to adjust more easily to the university environment, to provide them with useful information about the regulations and procedures present in UVT or at the faculty where they study, to help them adjust to life in the dormitory, to facilitate their communication with colleagues and teachers, to support their motivation for studies, to offer them support, to develop their independence in learning etc. This can provide freshmen with an easier transition from a pre-university school environment to a university environment, better adaptation to academic demands and autonomous student status, higher chances of academic performance, a lower risk of dropping out, personal development , harmonious social and professional – the prerequisites for the development of a successful career.

Brief description of the main actors involved in this program:

• The student-tutor: is a student at a bachelor's degree (year II, III, IV), master's or doctorate program who, within the program, on a voluntary basis, will tutor a group of between 5-30 students from the first year of the undergraduate studies. The student tutor is tasked with helping peers develop the personal and learning skills needed to meet their academic goals.
• The student tutor coordinator: is a student who has performed well in a previous tutoring program or other volunteer activities, has good academic results, has organizational/management skills and can coordinate and monitor the work of other student tutors. 
• Tutored student: is the first-year student of the bachelor's degree cycle who benefits from specific peer-tutoring activities for a better adaptation to the academic environment and student life.
• The teaching staff responsible for the tutoring program at the faculty level: is a teacher appointed by the faculty management to ensure the smooth running of the tutoring and peer-tutoring program at the faculty level. He collaborates with the program coordinator from the Career Counseling and Guidance Center (CCOC), is involved in the selection process of student tutors, handles the distribution of lists of student tutors to year tutors and the final evaluation of student tutors and coordinators .
• Tutor of the year: is the teaching staff assigned to provide support and guidance to students in a certain year and university study program.

To be able to fulfill their roles properly, student-tutors and student-coordinators will need to develop certain basic skills, acquire certain knowledge, methods and means specific to the tutoring activity. In this sense, the Peer to Peer Tutoring (P2PT) Program has 5 training sessions: 4 initial training modules (1. Peer-tutoring. The role of the student tutor. Specific tasks, 2. Development of learning skills, 3. Development social skills, 4. UVT regulations and procedures) and a deepening development module (5. Specific peer-tutoring activities. Exercises and applications).

Carrying out individual and group tutoring activities, online communication with tutored students, offering support in solving administrative or social problems, facilitating social meetings between students are just some of the activities that student tutors will carry out in this program. Student tutor coordinators will support the development of these activities, monitor their implementation and mediate the connection with the CCOC coordinator. 

The volunteer activity of the student-tutors will be periodically reported to the program coordinator of the UVT Career Counseling and Guidance Center. Both student-tutors and student-coordinators will prepare 2 evaluation reports. Given that they have carried out, until the end of the program, a total of at least 60 volunteer hours, they will be evaluated in the AI ​​session by the teacher responsible for the program at the faculty/study program level. The evaluation of the activity of student tutors will be marked with the pass/fail qualification, according to Regulation regarding the granting of credits for volunteer activity in UVT. In terms of granting the qualification admis, student tutors will benefit from 2 additional transferable study credits, corresponding to the optional discipline Volunteering, included in the curriculum of all undergraduate and master's degree programs in UVT. The Peer to Peer Tutoring program takes place only in the first semester of the academic year. Also, students who have accumulated at least 60 hours of activity will benefit, at the end of the contract, from the issuance of a volunteer certificate.

Useful documents: 

• Guidelines for conducting the Peer to Peer Tutoring Program 2022-2023
• Guidelines for conducting the Peer to Peer Tutoring Program 2023-2024

Academic tutoring

Academic tutoring represents the set of activities and measures aimed at supporting and guiding students with the aim of facilitating their integration and course in university education.

The tutoring activity offers support in order to improve educational performance and supports students in activities such as organizing individual study, using the resources necessary for learning, developing their full potential, shaping a moral profile and informing them about professional perspectives and building their future career, in order to improve performance their academics. 

Tutor of the year is the teaching staff designated by the Faculty Council to provide support and guidance to students from a specific year and university study program.

For the academic year 2023-2024, the list of year tutors for each year and study program is available HERE, respectively for Teacher Training Department HERE. 

Webinars/workshops/workshops offered by CCOC-UVT

Students of the Western University of Timișoara (UVT) can participate during the academic year in a series of development activities given by Career Counseling and Guidance Center (CCOC-UVT), carried out in the form of workshops or webinars. These workshops have the role of offering UVT students support in adapting to the academic environment, in managing resources to make the learning process more efficient, support in the process of self-knowledge, awareness and development of intra- and interpersonal skills, but also support in perfecting the skills necessary to enter the market labor.

To provide UVT students with a program of development personal and professional as complex as possible, to complement the professional training developed through the didactic activities related to the university study programs, CCOC-UVT penciled 3 thematic categories in which the held workshops fall: 

• activities to develop effective learning skills – aim to increase students' academic performance, by enriching their repertoire of effective learning techniques, by stimulating motivation and academic commitment, and by facilitating autonomy and active learning.
• socio-emotional skills development activities - they consider increasing the chances of social and professional success of students, by being aware of the functional or dysfunctional reactions they show in the face of various requests and understanding the changes they can adopt to achieve their own goals.
• career guidance and employment skills development activities have the purpose of preparing students for professional life, by identifying career directions compatible with their own vocational profile, by exploring opportunities for professional training and/or career development and by learning specific skills for insertion on the labor market and employment.

The themes of development workshops for students that CCOC-UVT currently has in its portfolio, grouped into the three categories presented above, are:

Activities to develop effective learning skills:

• • The art of learning – Effective learning strategies, methods and techniques

Learning is a central activity, constantly present in a student's life, and we all know that it is not easy to learn sustainably on a daily basis and stay connected to each subject. However, learning itself is a process that can be constantly refined and improved, and we aim to support students so that they have a successful educational path!

• • Attention - the secret of performance

At every moment, many external and internal stimuli act on us. Few of them are received clearly, are well understood and correctly interpreted, and only a part of the stimuli attract our attention and are aware. Attention works like a muscle: if it is not trained, it atrophies, but if it is used correctly, it develops and grows. In this webinar, we want to outline the answer to a series of questions regarding the specifics of attention: How does attention help us perform in our work? How many types is it and what is its importance in our daily life?

• • Fake News

The Internet can be both our best friend and a challenge that we must learn to face. Since 2016, the phenomenon of fake news has taken all digital media by storm: "Who is telling the truth?" became the question on everyone's lips. In this workshop we want to focus on the context in which fake news occurs and ways we can open our eyes when cognitive biases seem to blind our reason.

• • Getting started with using digital educational platforms

In the context of conducting didactic activities in online format, we propose to students a webinar that will address a series of introductory notions that will help them to successfully use the digital tools used at the UVT level in the educational process. 

• • Grit – Passion & Perseverance

Have you ever wondered what is the difference between successful people and unsuccessful people? What makes the former different? What information, habits or skills do they have? A new concept, developed in psychology under the name of GREET, it explains what is at the basis of human success and achievement, and we propose to share with you the conclusions of the founders of this philosophy of life.

• • Introduction to e-learning

In this webinar we address the following topics: The advantages of e-learning in the academic development of students; The use of modern technology in adapting the educational process; Use of online educational platforms (eg Google Classroom, Moodle); Use of scientifically validated information search platforms (ANELIS and Google Scholar) and other current topics.

• • Exam session in the online world (Get ready for exams)

In this webinar, we will present recommendations regarding the management of virtual format exams and try to answer students' concerns regarding the conduct of the exam session in the online environment.   

• • Procrastination 101

We are all sometimes in the situation where we intend to take care of the tasks we have ahead of time, but along the way we get lost in the distractions of mundane life: another scroll on Instagram, a refresh on Facebook, another series on Netflix... And the tasks remain unfulfilled until the last hundred meters. Procrastination, or the great enemy of productivity, is a behavior that steals everyone's time and resources. This webinar is dedicated to students who want to better understand what the elements of procrastination are and what strategies we can approach to leave this behavior behind.

Social-emotional skills development activities:

• • Reason – the friend you can't always rely on

One of the things that sets us apart from other beings on Earth is our ability to reason, to think logically. This distinctive element has become our main decision-making tool, not to mention the social and cultural value with which we invest it. However, reason is not always "correct", and at times logic is overshadowed by certain "errors" (eng. biases). Thus, we invite you to a webinar in which we will discuss the most common errors in thinking, to be aware of them and try to avoid them in the future.

• • Public speaking - Between fear and applause

The workshop covers issues such as the thoughts behind the fear of public speaking, how we can manage the emotions that overwhelm us when we are in front of an audience, and also consider a number of recommendations practice to have a better speech.

• • Cyberbullying

Through this workshop, we want to raise awareness of the risks that can appear in the online environment, especially in social media, as well as the fact that the erroneous use of information can have devastating effects on a person's life.  

• • Managing performance anxiety

In this workshop we want to give students practical methods to reduce their fear of getting a low grade or failing exams, even though they have thoroughly prepared for them.

• • Time management – ​​Gamified edition

Through this workshop students can learn how to value their time, how to become efficient and productive, how to be in control of their schedule, how to be content instead of exhausted, and how to "do" free time.

• • Teamwork – How do we work better with others?

This is a workshop where students learn how to organize themselves better when working in teams, either in an educational context or at work, but also how to know their strengths in relation to others.

• • Emotional intelligence

Emotions show us what we like or dislike, what we want, how we look at the external environment and what reactions we have to what happens to us. In order to know ourselves better, it is important to understand emotions, find out what needs lie behind them and act accordingly. We aim to offer students, through this workshop, support in the process of becoming aware of emotions and finding an appropriate response to them. 

• • Empathy, connection and trust in communication

This workshop aims to support students in learning how to deliver an impactful message to those around them that will be heard, how to better present their ideas or how to be more aware of them in dialogue with the others. 

• • How to become a good negotiator?

Negotiation involves a dialogue between two or more people, or between two or more parties, the purpose of which is to achieve a beneficial outcome (for all parties involved or just for one/some of them). Through this workshop, we can help you develop the necessary skills to be able to negotiate effectively and achieve the desired results.

Career guidance and employment skills development activities:

• • Profile of the student entrepreneur

The labor market is changing. With the pandemic, a large number of people had to change their job or even their field of activity. Professional conversions will continue to gain ground. During the webinar, we want to bring to the students both new trends on the labor market and tips & tricks on how to stay relevant in a changing society.

• • Taking a job interview

It is said that a person's life can be described by a few essential events. In recent years, taking a job interview has become one of those events for many of us. We all go through such an interview at least once in our life, so it is recommended to be prepared for this moment and inform ourselves about the tips and tricks that we can apply to achieve the desired professional results! Through this workshop we aim to address self-presentation and communication skills in a professional environment so that each student can ensure that they will be successful in future job interviews.

• • A CV to promote you

A resume can promote our seriousness and level of professionalism, communication ability, professional credibility and our career development results. This webinar aims to prepare the future job candidate for writing a compelling resume.

• • Personal development through Design Thinking 

This workshop starts from the idea that everyone is a creative person. To be an innovator and gain a competitive advantage, we need to fully develop our design and creative thinking skills, both of which are becoming essential in today's business environment.

Participation in at least 10 of the webinars organized by CCOC-UVT during an academic year allows obtaining 0,75 points in the process of granting accommodation in the UVT dormitories.

Also, considering the pandemic context and the consequences it has in the social sphere both in the short and long term, CCOC-UVT came to the support of students and with a range of social activities to facilitate communication between them and their colleagues in the university. 

The social activities have the role of supporting UVT students by creating a framework that allows them to meet to communicate and get to know colleagues from various study programs and from various university years, to discuss their hobbies, to debate certain ideas, knowledge, contributing both to their development and to the development of a long-lasting social network.

The weekly schedule of webinars and social networking activities carried out by CCOC-UVT in the 2023nd semester of the academic year 2024-XNUMX can be viewed by accessing THIS LINK.

Students will be informed about the details of these activities, their calendar or the registration method through the institutional e-mail addresses @e-uvt.ro, through the section Events for students from the UVT website and through CCOC-UVT Facebook page.

In addition to the personal and professional development workshops, UVT students can always call on the individual counseling services offered by CCOC-UVT – educational and vocational counseling, career counseling or counseling for the purpose of personal optimization – completing THIS FORM.

In addition, CCOC-UVT also facilitates a number of webinars addressed to students throughout the country, within a program established specifically to offer them support in the decision-making process regarding the continuation of their studies after graduating from high school.

The workshops held within this program address topics such as: 

• • The secret of a fulfilled life / March 13, 2024, 15:00 p.m

 In this webinar, we will discuss some aspects that can guide you in life, giving you the chance to build your own compass to indicate your fulfillment. Obviously, this compass needs to be individualized, which is why by going through this webinar we want you to be able to unlock the answers that are already within you. You're welcome! 

• • A journey to oneself  / March 20, 2024, 15:00 p.m

 Through this webinar we aim to embark on a journey towards ourselves. The purpose of this journey is to find out who we really are, what our interests, values ​​and strengths are. We want to pay equal attention to the aspects we want to develop to become the best version of ourselves. If we made you curious, we are waiting for you at the webinar!

• • How to overcome lack of motivation? / March 27, 2024, 15:00 p.m

 How can you accomplish your learning goals when you feel unmotivated, procrastinate, or preoccupied with other details in your life? In this webinar, we will address the strategies that allow you to reach an optimal level of productivity and how you can operationalize your academic goals, regardless of the obstacles that appear in your way.

• • What is the driver in my career decision-making process? / April 3, 2024, 15:00 p.m

Career decision is a process that takes place over time and involves choosing a career alternative from those available at a given time. The actual choice has behind it several stages that every person who is interested in making a suitable decision for himself, which will subsequently lead to increased levels of satisfaction in work, but also in his personal life, should go through.

You've probably already started thinking or been asked, "What are you doing after high school?" or perhaps you have already made up your mind. Regardless of the situation, we look forward to your webinar to explore what we can rely on when we want to make a choice that is right for us.

• • How to make friends with your emotions? / April 10, 2024, 15:00 p.m

 Through this webinar we aim to show you the colorful world of emotions, with an emphasis on how we can make friends with them, even the uncomfortable ones. 

• • Time: enemy or friend? / April 17, 2024, 15:00 p.m

 Through this webinar, we aim to support you in becoming more efficient and productive by developing a set of useful habits, skills, systems and principles to effectively manage the time you spend performing activities in your daily life.

• • In the digital age, is it worth physically coming to the university? / April 24, 2024, 15:00 p.m

 Through this webinar we aim to invite students to a debate with the aim of answering the question: "What is more useful for my career: online courses or the university campus?". Starting from this point of discussion, we will try to look at education from several angles.

• • Choosing the right study program / May 8, 2024, 15:00 p.m. / July 10, 2024, 15:00 p.m.

 Through this webinar, we want to support you in the process of identifying the university study programs that suit both your professional values ​​and interests, as well as the type of personality you have, but also to build together the necessary decision-making steps for an assumed and informed choice .

To participate in this program, students are invited to complete the following REGISTRATION FORM, where they can indicate topics of interest.

Students can also request individual career counseling sessions by filling out the form TO THIS FORM or can use psycho-vocational testing platform YTM. More details about individual counseling services for students, HERE.

Participation in all activities offered by CCOC-UVT to students or pupils is free.

For other information about CCOC-UVT activities, we are at your disposal at the e-mail address ccoc@e-uvt.ro.

Reports of CCOC-UVT activities

• Report – Discipline Professional Counseling and Career Guidance – academic year 2019-2020
• Activity report - The UVT Career Counseling and Guidance Center – the year 2020
• Activity report - The UVT Career Counseling and Guidance Center – the year 2021
• Activity report - The UVT Career Counseling and Guidance Center – the year 2022
• Activity report - The UVT Career Counseling and Guidance Center – the year 2023