Do you want to learn how to make a difference?
Join the Impact Coaching program!
There is a growing need for students and graduates alike to use academic knowledge to create a positive impact on the world. However, students often feel insufficiently equipped to do so. Therefore, the department of Sustainable Development will launch in September 2022 the Impact Coaching program! This program helps you to further develop your societal impact skills by offering personal coaching and guidance. During the academic year, specifically trained coaches will help you assess and develop your personal ambitions, and embrace your strengths so to improve your ability to have societal impact. Specifically, the program focusses on three areas:
- Personal leadership: Taking charge of your own life and responsibilities. By knowing yourself you can find your strengths to build on and points of improvements to work on.
- Teamwork: Creating societal impact is often a collective process. In this part we will focus on group dynamics: Building vision and momentum, and improving motivation and performance are key to successful collaboration.
- Interacting with societal stakeholders: Societal impact requires engaging with societal stakeholders, who each have their own interests and agendas. Maneuvering within these interests and agendas can be challenging, but also rewarding if done right.
During the academic year your will initially focus on personal leadership and teamwork. This will be done in the first semester (Phase 1). In the second semester (Phase 2), you will focus on societal stakeholders and work together with other students in the consultancy project, which aims to apply scientific knowledge to answer questions from societal stakeholders.
During the coaching sessions an open space will be created where you share development in groups of five students. The coaches will help you reflect on your progress and discover new opportunities for further development. Input for these sessions will come from you: discussions you participated in, workshops you followed, course work, or other experiences from daily or work life will be the basis of the sessions. During the academic year you will have in total seven to nine meetings. At the beginning of the program and during the year we will assess your progress via specific assessment tools so to follow your development and help identify focus points for the sessions.
Interested?
The program is open to all first-year master students of the Department of SD. This includes the masters Energy Science, Innovation Sciences, Sustainable Business and Innovation, Sustainable Development, and Water Science and Management. Participation is voluntary. The program is extracurricular, there are no EC points. Over the year we expect that you will spend about 28 hours on the program. This does not include time for activities that you undertake to develop specific skills, such as participating in workshops. Students that participated in a similar module last year, indicated that it was a very valuable addition to their personal development. Moreover, the program helps you to develop as professional to prepare for the labor market, and your thesis.
When you participate in the program, we expect you to continue throughout the year. Space might be limited, so we are looking for students who take program seriously.
When?
The regular moment to meet students is Tuesday afternoon. We concentrate activities as much as possible in the teaching periods. We try to avoid education free weeks and end-of-period weeks as much as possible. If more students sign up than anticipated, we might need add some further dates for meetings.
If you are interested in this unique opportunity to broaden your own skillset, please register here!