Priorities:University of Twente Student Priorities

Project Pitch Video

https://youtu.be/oJ6BNYDalOo

Spring 2016 Priorities

The initial exposure of young students towards the entrepreneurial mindset and environment is not particularly well developed as compared to the other aspects in the Twente area.

This finding was discussed and reaffirmed by the other parties present during our first stakeholder meeting.

Based on this experience the discussion quickly zoomed in on the aspect of personal development that promotes a more experimental, hands-on, entrepreneurial and proactive mindset.

Essentially asking the question of how do we get students to…

  * think about why they are here!

  * develop a personal identity.

  * set their own personal goals.

  * select their assignments and work on these goals.

  * develop their own moral compass.

  * try something new more often.

  * stimulate their own curiosity.

…and develop these ideas early enough so they can pick courses in an intentional and goal oriented way.

The new education system introduced in 2013 the Twente Education Model. Already tried to address these aspects. However, due to the inherent inertia of tutors and tutees, these ideas still need more time to come full fruition. In that way, additional support to could support these concepts.

The team realized that while there are many facilities available for personal self-development, start-up funding and extracurricular content like the Honours Program many students don’t know about them and even worse do not care to know about them.

It seemed like an imperative focus for this UIF-Team to stimulate the personal development of young students so that the available resources are used more effectively.

Furthermore, it is necessary to have a positive and inclusive environment available on campus. The DesignLab as it stands today fulfills this role and will likely be a fitting and great place from which the UIF program should operate.

The aspects above can be summarized by 4 simple goals.

            1. Keep spreading the ideas and find mentors that can help with that.

            2. A need for self-development!

            3. Entrepreneurship needs to be valued by staff and students alike.

            4. The necessity of an inclusive environment for all the points above.

Mid-term and long-term goals

The University Innovation fellows present in Twente needs to be established. (Mid 2017) While there are many students run organizations none of them work in this context. Therefore, it is very important that the presence of the UIF committee and students are consistent and well established across the various parties across campus.

The first project associated with this is to hold launch event(s) and brainstorm sessions with various parties, in order to get our name out there.

Subsequent to this initial goal the UIF-Twente team needs to become a well-trusted institution on campus. Essentially, requiring the development of a UIF-Twente brand. This aspect is very important to assure the future effectiveness of this project. It is very difficult to determine a fixed milestone for this project, however, within one and a half years (early 2018) UIF should be a well-established name.

Subsequent steps to establish a students self-development as the focus of the UIF program

In the first brainstorm session, the necessity for support for early’s students self-development was established.

Establishing a space a center and sanctuary for self-development. 

One approach towards stimulating self-development is offering students feedback and a safe place within which to receive this feedback. The DesignLab at this university could fulfill this function admirably. The goal is to establish this space connected to an easy and repetitive schedule with the ideas of self-driven learning as well as an ethical and moral understanding of once impact. No later than February 2017 should relate events start taking place in the DesignLab. This should allow students to get in touch with the program by the end of the academic year(July 2017).

 

Spring 2017 Priorities

The collaboration between the university as an organization and the university as a research facility is at the moment not as good as it could be. Many resources such as the knowledge and skills of students are not considered. The university is rather seeking help for the realizations of inside projects from outside companies and is therefore not using the talent that is right in front of them.

The first priority of the spring 2017 fellows is therefore to enhance the collaboration between different UT organizations and bring them into contact with the students.

The main goals we try to reach are:

• Awareness about all the possibilities the University holds for its students, researchers and staff
• Collaboration between staff, students and research in terms of resources as well as in term of skills and knowledge
• Create an atmosphere that is feels natural to search for help within the university first before going to an outside company

Steps improve collaboration and communication within UT organizations, students, researchers and staff members

In order to create an atmosphere of greater collaboration between the different members of the University we would like to propose different projects.

• Week of possibilities
• Student pool
• Add paragraph to Newsletter about board decisions and use platform such as Loomio so that students can add their opinions and suggestions.

Week of Possibilities

Our first priority in order to face the problem of collaboration we encountered during our analysis of the campus is to set up a week of possibilities to show all different parties of the university what possibilities in terms of collaboration they have. The idea is to introduce all different organizations of the university and what this organization can provide in terms of resources and knowledge or skills. It is all about increasing the awareness of all members of the university about what different facilities and organizations the university has to offer.

Student Pool

Our second priority will be to set up a pool of students, where students can indicate what kind of skills and education they have. By signing up for that student pool they agree to be approachable for university intern project that otherwise would have been given to companies. The basic idea is to use the talent of students and give them real world problems on which they can work. Students can make valuable work experiences and the university can save money by first asking students to look for a solution. Students will be paid for working on the project. In order to avoid the problem of unreliability of students fixed deadlines will be discussed and the university can decide at every step to outsource the project when they have the feeling that the students are not able to finish the project correctly or on time.

News of UT board

Our final priority would be to focus on the lack of communication and collaboration between the board of the university and the students and staff. We would like to have discussion with the UT news and the board about possibly adding a paragraph on the board’s decisions to the end of the monthly student newsletter. We would then like to set up a page on a platform such as loomio, for us to reiterate what that paragraph states and allows students to provide their opinions and suggestions. This format of a pool could enable the board to obtain a more all-encompassing view of what the student body thinks.

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Related links

University Website

University of Twente

Wiki pages

University of Twente

University of Twente Student Priorities

University Innovation Fellows

Fall 2016

Marjanne Luinstra

David Goedicke

Jos van 't Hof

Arian Hohmann

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