“Knowledge Transfer is our core activity, which we want to do at a high level,” says Project Manager Constanze Thomassen. “We already did this for our students in the programmes, but now that we’re transitioning from an educational institute to a knowledge institution, it also means opening doors to the world around us. We want to be a place, a platform for knowledge and research, for everyone who is professionally interested in ICT.”
The team got to work on the theme broadly and enthusiastically. Due to Covid, among other factors, it was not possible to tick off the entire wish list. For example,
the development of short courses for IT professionals was temporarily suspended. We would have been asking too much of the lecturing team during this extraordinary time. However, great results were achieved, which will have great value in the future as well. The highlights:
Connection with secondary education
“We wanted to create a better connection with secondary education. To this end, we developed the HAVICT programme. Through this programme, Havo 4 students can come and get a taste of IT one afternoon a week. They work on experiments and assignments at our premises. The pilot with two secondary education institutes in Eindhoven was a success. We’re now looking at expanding to Tilburg and introducing it in the so-called national Havo P programme. This offers Havo students the opportunity to learn in a more practical way. We may be involving other Fontys education programmes as well.”
Master’s programme
“We wanted to offer our most analytical students better opportunities with a Master’s degree in IT at level 5. The accreditation process for this was completed successfully. We sought a distinctive position in the market, wrote a profile, went through the macro-efficiency test and set up the basics. All this led to a positive recommendation. The development team structured the Master’s programme substantively and welcomed the first students.”
Alumni
“As a graduation coordinator, I also had a personal ambition. Although we have an outstanding network of companies and organisations around us, we didn’t do enough for our alumni. From Knowledge Transfer, we made the first steps towards an active alumni policy. A great achievement is the organisation of our successful IT Festival (celebrating 50 years of IT education in Eindhoven), which returns annually and in which alumni play a major role. An alumni coordinator was later appointed upon recommendation of our team. Looking ahead, I hope the alumni coordinator will make himself obsolete. That means we have such a strong connection that alumni will do it themselves.”
