Catherine Ann Lombard
‘We must shape education to make a contribution in the future,’ rector Ed Brinksma addressed the packed audience in the Waaier auditorium. ‘At the same time we really don’t know in five to ten years what the world will look like. We do know we need people with transferable skills who have a certain width of knowledge, and that the same time we also need to focus on helping students develop a depth in a specific subject.’
Brinksma described this as a T-shaped professional, one who is rooted in methodological skills and still able to apply a multidisciplinary approach to problems by thinking divergently and creatively. The new UT philosophy towards education is called the 3-Os which stands for Ontwerp, Onderzoek, and Organisatie, or Design, Research, and Organization.
To better envision the architecture of the new curriculum, participants attended two workshops out of seventeen offered to begin discussing what subjects might be universally taught to all incoming students. For example, a class on entrepreneurship might be offered as a core course, as it crosses many disciplines from business administration to engineering to industrial design.
‘There is a need for every institution to profile itself in the international arena,’ said Robbert Dijkgraaf, Professor of Mathematical Physics at the University of Amsterdam and one of the panelists during the closing debate. ‘Many are asking ‘Why are we reorganizing ourselves and why now?’ Well, the State Secretary is going to ask for this, so we have to be ready.’
In September, the new bachelor portfolio and teaching model, based on a Danish system, will be piloted by the Biomedical Engineering group. It will then be implemented throughout the university in 2013.
