Saxion hosts highly successful conference day: 15 Years of Honours

A highlight of the Thursday morning programme was the keynote speech given by Saxion’s ex-honours student, Kristy McGovern. She had travelled from her home country of Kenya especially for the occasion, so she could share with all those present how participating in Saxion Honours had personally contributed to her life.

The conference was to celebrate 15 years of honours education in the Netherlands. This form education has been around for longer, but really took off thanks to the Sirius programme (2009 – 2014). Honours education is intended for students who want and can do more and who are ready for an extra challenge alongside their regular study programme. This form of education also provides room for experimentation.

More than 140 participants attended the first day of the conference. Around 40 organisations were represented, largely staff and students from universities, applied universities and higher education colleges. There was also a group of international guests from the European Honours network.

The programme included four parallel sessions with a large number of interesting and relevant teacher and student pitches, inspiration lectures, workshops, poster sessions en fishbowl discussions. The list is too long to mention everything, but subjects included:

• New Horizons for Honours Education;
• Discover the potential you want to unleash;
• Purpose Driven Learning for Sustainable Futures & Human Flourishing;
• Our Future Leaders – a (self) leadership pilot programme for Honours students at the UT;
• It takes a community to raise resilient students;
• NRO study ’Making Talent Work’ - Perceived effects of participation in excellence and honours programmes, according to university alumni and employers;
• The challenge of transfer of honours innovations to regular education.

Have a look at the illustration of Fransje Immink.  

Photo from left to right: Holkenborg en Mitchelle Muchuchuti