Board games room in the BUG, a garden for IFB UG and MUG students and staff, a chillout zone in the Economics Library, a multimedia studio in the History Library and many more interesting projects - voting has started in this year's edition of the Academic Citizens' Budget!

The University of Gdańsk's Academic Citizens' Budget is a competition in which students, doctoral students and employees of the University of Gdańsk can submit their ideas for developing the university's infrastructure. There is PLN 200,000 to spend, with 100,000 each for staff and student projects.

In April this year, the academic community had the opportunity to propose their initiatives for the third edition of ACB UG. 18 projects were submitted: 10 employee proposals and eight student ideas.

In late March and early April this year, a parallel call for proposals was held for another university competition—the first edition of the Green University. The academic community of our university submitted 30 different ideas for implementing ‘green’ initiatives on university campuses.

In previous years, it was in the Academic Citizens' Budget that these projects were submitted.

As a reminder, five ideas were selected for implementation in the voting held from May 20-27 for the ‘Green UG’ projects. Read more about it here.

At the end of September, the working team completed the process of verifying the projects submitted by the applicants to the third edition of ACB UG, which were then approved by the competition committee and admitted to the voting stage. Now it is time for them to be selected by electronic voting.

‘This is the third edition of ACB UG,’ says Vice-Rector for Student Affairs, dr hab. Urszula Patocka-Sigłowy, prof. UG. ‘In this competition, we want to activate and integrate our community by building its close identification with the university - the place where we work and study, spending a significant part of our time there. By listening to the ideas and expectations of our community, we enable them, through the competition, to co-determine the changes taking place both inside the university facilities and in the external spaces of our campuses.’

In the two previous editions of ACB UG, nearly 10,000 members of our academic community voted.

Six of the eight projects selected by the vote were successfully implemented. Last year, among the best employee projects from the first edition of ACB UG - the realised projects were: Pocket Park by the Neophilology building and Gym & Street Workout - an area with outdoor exercise equipment located next to the tennis courts next to the former Rector's Office building, while among the student projects - new work and leisure spaces including: The University-wide Zero Stress Zone at WPiA - a space for active relaxation and the exchange of ideas - and the Chillout Zone at WNS, thanks to which a lounge area was created in the western part of the faculty building.

This year, it was the turn of the projects that proved best in the second edition of ACB UG to be implemented. In May, the winning employee project entitled U-type bicycle stands under the roof of the Rectorate was completed, thanks to which 15 bicycle stands were set up in the vicinity of the building. The second of the employee projects, Pocket on the Humance - the revitalisation of the patio in the Faculty of Languages and History building, is still awaiting the selection of a contractor for the works, which envisages its transformation into a pocket park, a green friendly space for rest and relaxation, serving the integration of students and employees of the university.

One of the two student projects voted for has been fully implemented, both located at the Faculty of Economics. The Eco-nomic Park project enabled the creation of an outdoor ecological space for quiet and relaxation between classes. It was located in the vicinity of the Faculty of Economics building on the side of Student Dormitory No. 7 and the Foreign Languages Centre. The second project, Co-Economy - a co-working zone of the Faculty of Economics at the University of Gdańsk, is at an advanced stage of implementation. A friendly study and leisure area for students and staff is being created in the Faculty building, located in the connector between halls A and B.

This year, 16 ideas were shortlisted by the competition committee for the voting stage. Among the 9 staff projects - 6 proposals concern the development of the internal space of the facilities or the purchase of equipment for them. 3 projects relate to the external areas of the university.

Of the 7 student ideas - 6 of them are located in university facilities and one relates to the university's outdoor space.

The list of all projects eligible for voting has been compiled in two separate lists, separately for each category, which are available below the text.

A detailed description of the projects can be found in the ACB UG panel, after logging in to the Employee or Student Portal and selecting the Academic Citizens' Budget tab in the side menu, and then the Projects for Voting tab in the top bar.

Each employee, student and doctoral student can vote for up to three projects during the voting process. You can only vote once.

Employees cast their votes in the category ‘Staff projects’ and students and doctoral students in the category ‘Student projects’. Those who are both employees and students or doctoral students of the university at the time of voting - can vote in both categories. By logging in to the Employee Portal - they select up to 3 projects from the list of employee projects, and by logging in to the Student Portal - they can also select up to 3 projects from the pool of student projects.

A new feature of this year's ACB UG is the introduction of changes to the rules for calculating voting results. ‘In order to level the playing field for all participants in the competition, a weighting system has been introduced to convert the votes cast for projects into the number of points awarded to individual projects,’ informs Piotr Szpajer, ACB UG coordinator.

Detailed information on the weighting system is available in Appendix No. 3 to the Rules and Regulations.

The projects with the highest number of points in a given category, within the pool of available budget funds, will be selected for implementation in the following year.

The results of the voting will be known by November 7, this year.