Congratulations to our Class 2022!

Our Class of 2022 graduated on the 20th May. It was a great pleasure to welcome so many families, host families from our local community and other guests at the ceremony after two years without guests. The evening before the ceremony we welcomed the guests with a café and a cultural show, all prepared and coordinated by the first year students. The guests also got to meet with our leadership during an informal but hopefully informative session on how life has developed at RCN the last 2 years.

“Being a student at UWC RCN is always a challenging experience, but never more so than in the last two years. This year our students lived through an incredible amount of rain, a huge amount of academic work, a phenomenal amount of growth in our residential and extra-academic programme, and they have done so with integrity, resilience and a huge amount of joy. They have certainly brought joy to all of those who are lucky enough to work with them. Congratulations UWC Red Cross Nordic 2022!” Natasha Lambert, Director of Academics

Photos by RCN Media Crew

“Two years of happiness, laughter, tears, study nights, fjord jumps and so much more… it all is slowly wrapping up and parents are starting to appear in every corner, people with graduation hats (that’s the Scandinavian students), messy rooms and conversations of future meet up plans are heard everywhere. It feels like a big rock has fallen off of many people’s shoulders and now for the last few days we have a truly IB-free and UWC-full time. These past two years for many have been full of growth where mountains were climbed (sometimes, literally). These years were full of dances, fun, late night conversations and spontaneity. But also tears, rainy days, hard patches and perhaps even confusion. They have built a community that is now slowly spreading all throughout the world.” Liva Asmane, RCN ’22

For the last 2 years due to the pandemic we have livestreamed the graduation ceremony. We know that many parents are unable to travel the long way to Norway so we have decided to continue live streaming all graduation ceremonies. This way our whole community can connect with the occasion.

See the Graduation video of the Class 2022:

As part of the annual council meeting on Campus at the end of April every year, the members of the council elect the UWC RCN Board.
Our Board Chair Geir Jorgen Bekkervold has stepped down due to his new work commitments and a new chair has been elected. Elizabeth Sellevold, our new Board Chair has a Master in Economics from University of St. Andrews, Scotland. Elizabeth is an experienced and versatile administrator based in Oslo and works as Publishing Manager at Vigmostad & Bjørke. She is a UWC alumna from UWC Atlantic and has been associated with the International Council (2016 -2019), the Norwegian National Committee, and has been the chairperson of the UWC Norway Board (2015 -2019).
In addition to Elizabeth, the council also selected 2 new board members, Jens Petersen (Denmark) and Johnny Nilsson (Sweden).
Jens Petersen has long experience as a headmaster at a Danish boarding school whilst Johnny Nilsson adds a lot of experience from politics in Sweden.

UWC RCN BOARD 2022

Chair: Elizabeth Sellevold (Norway)
Deputy chair: Jens Petersen (Denmark)
Sweden: Jonny Nilson
Iceland: Sigridur Anna Thordardottir
Norwegian Red Cross: Charlotte Nordstrøm
UWC Norway: Ivar Lund-Mathiesen
Staff Rep: Ashok Singh
Student Rep: Marie Rasmussen

We look forward to working together with the new board!
At the same time, we would like to take this opportunity to sincerely thank both Hans Lindemann and Jan Björkman who have served our Board 4 and 2 periods respectively. Hans was elected in 2010 as a representative for Denmark. During these years he also has also been most active with the Danish national committee. Hans came to us with extensive experience as a Rektor and teacher of Mathematics. During many of these years, Hans has acted as the Deputy Chair of the Board and has represented the College in the International Council of UWC. Jan Björkman joined us with a background as a politician from Sweden, having been a member of the Parliament and the Education Committee, as well as the First Vice-Speaker of the Parliament. Jan was a member of our Council from 2012 to 2016, before he joined the Board. Hans and Jan have found practical ways of utilizing their affinity with the UWC values, to the benefit of the College as a whole and for making us better known to key stakeholders in their respective countries.

You can find the full overview of board and council members here.