A physicist for the executive committee
A physics student is the new VSETH president: Since Monday evening, Thomas Gumbsch is at the helm of the ETH students’ association. He is the successor of mathematics student Julia Wysling.
Dancing and physics – until now these have been the passions of Thomas Gumbsch. From now on he wants to dedicate himself to the interests of ETH students. On Monday evening the VSETH students’ association elected the 24-year-old physics student to be president, together with six new members and one previous member of the executive committee. “I am really looking forward to working with the new executive committee team”, says Gumbsch.
Thomas Gumbsch came to ETH from Freiburg im Breisgau. He has done his Bachelor’s and Master’s studies in physics at ETH and the last remaining step before he can graduate is his Master’s thesis. Gumbsch chose to come to ETH because of its reputation in teaching and research. But not just that: “Barely two weeks after applying, I already learned that I had been accepted at ETH. That convinced me.” He appreciates how perfectly the study programme at ETH is organised and that students can really concentrate on studying.
Achieving perfection as a pair
Thomas Gumbsch has to organise not only his study time but also his free time very carefully: dancing is more than a hobby for him. For years, he and his partner have been taking part in ballroom dance competitions (waltz, tango etc.). What looks so elegant and easy on the dance floor is actually achieved with a lot of hard work.
It takes three to four training sessions per week to dance among the best. “Achieving the perfect movement as a pair… that’s the challenge of dance”, says Gumbsch, and you can sense the commitment behind his words. “The ideal dance is made up of one body and four legs.”
A 24-hour job
In order to dedicate himself to dance, he resolutely followed the rule of studying during the week and dancing at the weekend. “For me personally, strict separation of study and free time was a formula for success”, he says. But he doesn’t want to generalise this for everyone. He also holds back with statements about his new role. First he wants to carefully learn the ropes of his position as president of VSETH.
It is clear to him that as VSETH president he will have to put dancing on the back burner: “Being the president of a students’ association is a full-time job.” His predecessor, mathematics student Julia Wysling, doesn’t put him under any illusions: “As president of VSETH, you are on duty 24 hours a day, seven days a week.”
Lessons from 9 February
Julia Wysling knows what she’s talking about. She looks back on an intensive and eventful year in which she and the VSETH as a whole were able to gain a lot of respect. It was already clear at the start of 2014 that it would be a year marked by politics: two large and important issues, tuition fees and scholarships, were on the agenda. Then came the 9th of February and the exclusion of Switzerland from the Erasmus+ student exchange programme. All of a sudden, Wysling and the VSETH learned what it means to have media attention.
This influenced her work greatly, but it didn’t stop her from establishing new channels of communication with students at the same time. For example, this year she started a Facebook page to share posts about her daily work for the VSETH. Since the start of this semester, the VSETH’s publication Polykum is no longer published as a newspaper but as a magazine. After her “gap year” at the VSETH, Julia Wysling wants to devote herself entirely to finishing her studies in mathematics.
Thomas Gumbsch wants to pick up where Julia Wysling left off. He, too, considers the flow of communication between the association and the students to be very important: “The doors of the VSETH are always open to ETH students who come to us with concerns.” The same goes for students who want to participate. On Tuesday morning, he already took over the “VSETH Präsi” page on Facebook.
A year of clarification
Like his predecessors, Thomas Gumbsch will take a year off from his studies in favour of the VSETH. He also wants to use this year to think about what specialisation to choose for his degree. Classically, physics has two directions: theoretical and experimental physics. Both interest Thomas Gumbsch in equal measure. He has not yet decided which one to focus on in his Master’s thesis, and he wants to find out during the coming year.
Can he really find time for this despite his 100 per cent commitment to the VSETH? Sure, says Thomas Gumbsch, looking back at the time before he started his studies: while he was in civilian service back in Germany, he didn’t have much time for anything else in the evenings either. That was when he realised that physics was the field he was the most excited about. With this thought, Thomas Gumbsch begins his work as the new VSETH president.