Leadership Fellow and Senior Fellows awarded

The national Netherlands Initiative for Education Research (NRO) annually awards the Comenius grants, on behalf of the Ministry of Education, Culture and Science. These grants enable teachers to bring their vision on teaching into practice. The grants for educational innovation are inspired by the well-known Veni, Vidi, Vici grants for research.

This year, two Utrecht teachers managed to secure a Senior Fellow grant. Utrecht University also won a Leadership Fellowship for the first time. A fantastic achievement and an important impulse for the further development of academic teaching.

Leadership fellow

Prof. Sanne Akkerman received €500,000 for the project "Students in UniCity: engagement in what happens for what matters". Together with co-coordinator Dr Jeroen Vermeulen and other lecturers, policy staff and educationalists, she will make the social engagement of our university towards the city more sustainable. Read more about this project and the Leadership fellow grant  here.

Senior Fellows

Senior Fellows receive €100,000 for each project. This concerns project proposals for the duration of two years, focused on innovation within a faculty, large degree programme or a substantial part of the institution. This year, no less than two project proposals from the strategic alliance of TU/e, WUR, UU, UMC Utrecht have been honoured.

Dr. Annet van Royen

"Interdisciplinary, challenge-based project education in the field of health (care)", Senior Fellow Dr Annet van Royen.

In this project, interdisciplinary, challenge-based project education is developed for master's students in Medicine, Biomedical Sciences (UU, UMC Utrecht), Biomedical Engineering (TU/e)) and Nutrition&Health (WUR). The aim is to prepare future doctors for interdisciplinary cooperation and to develop adaptive expertise. Adaptive expertise is the ability to solve new, complex problems in changing situations.

 

Prof. dr. ir. Bert Weckhuysen

The Da Vinci Program: Mastering an Active Learning-by-Doing Approach to Foster Sustainability, Senior Fellow Prof. Dr. Bert Weckhuysen.
The project focuses on sustainability and interdisciplinary cooperation. "The committee is very positive about the innovative character of the project. It appreciates the ambitions of the Da Vinci programme on an inter-university level and the pursuit of design-thinking within a multi-actor setting." The Da Vinci programme is aimed at master's students from TU/e, WUR, UU and UMC Utrecht and is jointly developed by these institutions. Two years ago Weckhuysen already won a Teaching Fellow grant from the Comenius programme.

 

TU/e, WUR, UU and UMC Utrecht form a strategic alliance and work together in the fields of education and research. For more information, see the news item on the Alliantie website.

Teaching Fellow grant

The Comenius programme also has Teaching Fellows who each receive € 50,000 for their project. These will be announced at the end of June.

Innovating your education?

Are you a teacher at Utrecht University and are you interested in submitting a proposal? This autumn lecturers can apply for a Comenius grant or other educational innovation grants. Please contact the Centre for Academic Teaching at cat@uu.nl. On Monday 21 June, 09:00 - 10:00 hrs, an information session on various educational innovation grants will be organised. There is also a workshop on educational innovation grants during the Strengthen Your Education Week planned: Tuesday 29 June, 10:00 - 11:00. Here, the grants will be briefly explained and then teachers will be helped with their applications.  After the summer, the first letters of intent for the 2021 grants should be submitted. The Centre has a large network of experts and is happy to help you optimise your project proposal.