University students should not have to wait until their first day of class to begin their journey. Nor should that journey end the day they dress up to celebrate their graduation. Rather than beginning and ending, it is, like energy, a journey that transforms.

Once you are part of the UPF community, you never stop being a member. And this sense of belonging has to be nurtured before classes even start, nor can it cease to be cultivated once the corresponding studies are over.

Accordingly, Pompeu Fabra University has been working for some time now on a strategy for building loyalty amongst the members of its community that goes beyond the strictly academic period they spend within its walls. Hence, initiatives such as La Benvinguda [The Welcome], launched this academic year with the aim of providing new undergraduate students beginning their time at UPF with a softer landing through a series of academic, social and leisure activities held before the academic year begins.

Pompeu Fabra University has been working on a strategy to build loyalty amongst the members of its community that goes beyond the strictly academic period they spend within its walls

But the community must also be cared for and strengthened even after students have moved on. This is where the Alumni programme comes in, working to keep up the bond between UPF and everyone who, at some point, has studied at our university and come to form a part of the great ‘UPF family’. Even if they are thousands of kilometres away. For precisely this purpose, UPF recently launched an initiative to create UPF Alumni international chapters, regional alumni hubs around the world to help build a global network and foster synergies that go beyond our borders. London, Paris, California and Chile are the first chapters to be launched.

Because once UPF, always UPF!