It is very important for a University to keep in touch with its alumni, as they are an important part of its history, but also because their successes are set examples for current and future students to follow.

Obviously, as it is not possible to truly report on my own tenure in the Rectorate of the University, I will limit myself to a few of the initiatives taken at the time, both during my term as Vice Rector, with Stamatis Alachiotis as Rector, and during my term as Rector.

Those years were particularly creative for the University. We managed an extremely ambitious construction programme, with buildings for the many new Departments that were established at the time, as well as the University’s emblematic Conference Centre and the Library. For the first time, we introduced the evaluation of faculty staff by the students, and we also conducted a study, the first in our country, on the future employment of our graduates and the relevance of this employment to their field of study. During the years of my rectorship we also inaugurated the operation of a summer school in Ancient Olympia, in cooperation with Harvard University. Those years were also marked by the confrontation between the universities and the Government at the time regarding the higher education system of the Technological Educational Institutes, in which, as President of the Rectors’ Assembly, I was at the forefront.

I would just like to add that it is a great honour for me that many of the students I taught, and especially many of those for whom I supervised their doctoral thesis, have excelled in their science and have become professors or prominent researchers in Greek and foreign universities.