This paper on "FEM Teaching and Education at TRANSILVANIA University, Braşov, Romania" was presented at the 5th International Conference on Reliability of Finite Element Methods for Engineering Applications - 10-12 May 1995, Amsterdam, The Netherlands.

Abstract

Braşov is the second town of Romania (500,000 inhabitants) placed in the middle of the country and surrounded by the mountains. Braşov is a very industrialized town judging even by the western European standards (the second ln Romania from this point of view, too) but it is also a well-known touristic centre, especially for winter sports. Braşov is a very nice old town (in 1234 the town was mentioned for the first time in documents, but the town had existed before). Here there are many historical monuments. Near Braşov, at about 20 km, in a village named Bran is located the famous Dracula's castle in the middle of a wonderful hill region.
The TRANSILVANIA University of Braşov has 10 facilities of different specialties, but most of them (6) are technical ones, most faculties and departments having engineering profile in several fields: mechanical engineering, mechanical technology, wood technology, electronics, electrotechnics, civil engineering a.s.o. Each faculty comprises several sections, each of them divided in some specialties. Our university is a big one with approximately 9000 students, from which over 7000 to technical faculties, and about 700 members of the teaching staff. Generally the studies last five years in the frame of so called "long duration courses". It also exists some sections for “short duration courses", comprised, in colleges lasting three years, but the number of the students is not very important. Beginning with this academic year the postgraduate courses were created, Master courses, called in Romania “Courses for Advanced Studies”. The long duration courses are divided into two parts: the first two years including general subjects (mathematics, physics, theoretical mechanic a.s.o) and the last three years with specialised subjects.