Utrecht members Comenius network

Peter Pelzer - ISO Lecturer of the Year 2024

Peter Pelzer was awarded Utrecht University's Teacher of the Year award in 2023 and was named national Lecturer of the Year in 2024. Peter is Associate Professor at the department of Human Geography and Spatial Planning, programme director of Continuing Education at the Faculty of Geosciences, and he is involved in the Urban Futures Studio and the Utrecht Young Academy.

Gönül Dilaver and Leoniek Wijngaards-de Meij - Comenius Leadership Fellow 2023

Project: Fostering an open mind and open attitude in higher education using games and art-based educational activities

This innovation project aims to teach students and teachers how to take different perspectives and engage in open dialogues by using creative educational activities (i.e., games, design process, dialogical art). Furthermore, institutional change for a culture of open dialogue will be stimulated by media and art.

Mariëlle Jambroes - Comenius Teaching Fellow 2023

Project: Medicine students as medical companion

Workplace learning outside the hospital, community-engaged learning, is a promising concept to learn students about the social determinants of health. Students accompanying a client as a medical companion is an example of community-engaged learning. In this project we will further develop ‘medical students as medical companions’, and explore the learning outcomes and scalability, to implement it in medical training.

Roos de Jonge - Comenius Teaching Fellow 2023

Project: Wicked problems in health care – a trans- and interdisciplinary approach

It is important for prospective doctors to work together, to look beyond the boundaries of medicine, and to be creative and flexible, keeping patients and society in mind. Therefore, a 10-week course will be developed, aimed at complex problems that cannot be solved from a single discipline. We hope that this will enable the students to see the challenges of the future from different perspectives.

Rianne van Lambalgen - Comenius Teaching Fellow 2023

Project: Facilitate connective thinking during the interdisciplinary curriculum

In this project, the tool Obsidian will be implemented in an interdisciplinary educational context, with the goal to teach students to make smart notes and to make connections between courses. The project is applied within the Bachelor of Liberal Arts and Sciences, at Utrecht University, where students design a large part of their own curriculum. 

Christel Lutz - Comenius Senior Fellow 2023

Project: Student Partners in Community Engaged Curriculum Innovation (SPiCE-UCU)

By introducing student partners and student-teacher teams, SPiCE-UCU will (1) bring to all our students co-creation practices that currently only our most daring students engage in with our most innovative teachers, (2) develop ways to do this in a manner that suits our specific learning community, and (3) distil encouraging and practical methods which can benefit other institutions.

Brianne McGonigle - Comenius Senior Fellow 2023

Project: UU Open Source Investigations Lab (OSINT lab)

This project aims to successfully set up and run an Open Source Investigations Lab. The Lab includes interdisciplinary university-wide BA and MA courses that will (1) equip students with the skills and ethical considerations required to conduct opens source investigations; and (2) bring students, teachers, and societal partners together to work on real-world projects that address global challenges.

Annerieke Oosterwegel - Comenius Senior Fellow 2023

Project: You are you: A Roadmap into adulthood (UrU)

This project aims to develop a (digital) network in collaboration with other mental health sites providing information and interactive tools to explore and navigate normal but difficult steps in their personal development, in order to prevent rumination and boost their mental space and effective study behaviour.

Sanne Akkerman - Comenius Leadership Fellow 2021

Project: Students in UniCity: engagement in what happens for what matters

With this Comenius Leadership grant, Akkerman wants to bring the social engagement of our university to an open, broader, and enduring engagement with urban life. To achieve this, she and UU alumni set up a transdisciplinary city programme called UniCity, consisting of joint and multi-year science projects with diverse people and communities. The programme creates a place where university and city come together and where students learn to find their academic uniqueness and joint contribution in the changing reality of everyday life. Six projects are set up across the city. Working educational principles are bundled into a model for educational and public engagement that is widely shared within the UU and with other higher education institutions.

Patricia Canning - Comenius Teaching fellow 2021

Project: FLEXible learning: Targeting Social Inequalities through Forensic Linguistics 

This proposal is for a new undergraduate interdepartmental level 3 course in Forensic Linguistics (FL) that combines academic learning with community engagement. FL is a dynamic subject that bridges language, law, psychology, and criminology, aligning with University College Utrecht’s liberal arts mission. It investigates how language is used in forensic settings, as well as its effects on people, institutions, and praxis. It will be the first FL course of its kind in mainland Europe. It targets social inequality through collaborative pedagogy and research with community and judicial organisations. This will be monitored, evaluated, and showcased through a new ‘task force’, ‘FLEX’ (Forensic Linguistic EXperiences), comprised of students, community stakeholders, and individuals who have experienced language-based challenges in forensic and institutional contexts.

Merel van Goch - Comenius Teaching fellow 2021

Project: I choose consciously: a reflective start with a broad, self-directed training through vlogs from seniors

In this project, prospective students learn - through vlogs of senior students - how to consciously choose courses before the start of the broad, self-directed undergraduate program Liberal Arts and Sciences (LAS). LAS-students design their own study path, resulting in a unique combination of deep, broad, integrative and reflective learning. During their studies they receive intensive guidance, but in the summer before they start, they choose their courses relatively independent. By these vlogs prospective LAS-students can independently make more conscious and better informed choices for a reflective start of their studies. They get to know the university better; they learn to make choices and to anticipate their consequences. This way, they study more consciously, confidently and enthusiastically, hopefully leading to less study or wellbeing problems.

Annet van Royen - Comenius Senior Fellow 2021

Project: Interdisciplinary, challenge-based project education in the field of health (care).

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.

Bert Weckhuysen - Comenius Senior Fellow 2021

Project: The Da Vinci Program: Mastering an Active Learning-by-Doing Approach to Foster Sustainability.

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.

Team Mixed Classroom - Dutch Higher Education Award

The Mixed Classroom-team of Utrecht University won the second prize in the category of universities of the Dutch Higher Education Award. The team consists of Lisette van Beek, Tine Béneker, Maarten Hajer, Sandra van der Hel, Jesse Hoffman, Astrid Mangnus, Jeroen Oomen, Peter Pelzer, Hilde Segond von Banchet, and Joost Vervoort.

Annerieke Oosterwegel - Comenius Teaching Fellow 2020

Project: Sustainably Internalising Autonomy (ADEM): a manual for yourself

Many students struggle with expectations they believe they have to meet. The aim of this project is to let students experience control over their academic career by gradually and concretely indicating how they can structure themselves and their experiences in such a way that they feel autonomous and resilient. There will be an autonomy development course, in which insights from developmental psychology and personality psychology - in particular identity development and autonomy - will be translated to the educational situation.

Jeroen Janssen - Comenius Senior Fellow 2020

Project: This is where I belong. Supporting first-generation students at the start of their studies

At the faculty of Social and Behavioural Sciences, first-generation students (students whose parents did not attend academic education) drop out significantly more often than second-generation students. Explanation: they do not feel at home as much in a university setting. This project will develop an evidence-informed intervention to help them feel at home more quickly.

Niels Bovenschen - Comenius Teaching Fellow 2019

Translational Medicine is a biomedical science that aims to translate scientific research into improvements in patient care and vice versa. This requires interaction between biomedical scientists, doctors, clinician scientists and patients. In order to enable this collaboration, the Faculty of Medicine is developing a curriculum-based, interdisciplinary biomedical laboratory elective for Bachelor's students within a research-based learning framework.

Tom Frijns - Comenius Teaching Fellow 2019

Unlike traditional cognitive approaches, UU is developing a training module which uses a strategy that improves students' intercultural skills. This creates an inclusive, collaborative classroom environment. The module is designed to improve the 21st century skills (e.g. intercultural communication and collaboration) and the general learning skills of students on the international Social, Health and Organisational Psychology Master's.

Margot Koster - nominated for the ISO Lecturer of the Year Award 2019

Margot Koster is teacher and programme director of the Bachelor programme Biology. Her ambition is to educate students to become future-proof biologists, and to motivate them and make them aware of the importance of academic knowledge for society. Furthermore, she would like to continue to develop herself as a teacher and does academic research into the effects of educational innovations in her teaching.

Gery Nijenhuis - Comenius Senior Fellow 2019

The purpose of this project is to improve the intercultural competences of students. Among the tools being deployed to this end is an interactive app that offers case studies representing fieldwork situations, along with the development of corresponding assignments. Lecturers are able to supervise students during discussion and reflection in the international classes – before, during and after the fieldwork. The content of the app is based on real-life cases from students who conducted fieldwork in previous years.

Bert Weckhuysen - Comenius Teaching Fellow 2019

Sustainable development and the transition to circular economies calls for a partnership between society, science and technology. Academic education must produce a new generation of transdisciplinary professionals who, together with stakeholders, can come up with innovative solutions. The Da Vinci project challenges third-year Bachelor's students to go beyond the boundaries between scientific disciplines through a learning-by-doing approach.

Fred Wiegant - Comenius Senior Fellow 2019

Utrecht University is developing a learning track on learning to think and work in interdisciplinary fashion, consisting of assignments, teaching methods and focused reflection exercises. This innovative learning track is based on good practices, the experiences of researchers in interdisciplinary collaborative partnerships and the experiences of Master's students in interdisciplinary professional practice. Its objective is to ensure students are well-prepared for the dynamic multi and interdisciplinary working environment of the future.

Tom Damen – Comenius Teaching Fellow 2018

Time to listen: using podcasts as learning tools – Utrecht University's Work and Organisational Psychology programme is using podcasts as a tool for learning. The educational podcasts are included in the curriculum as a kind of personalised e-learning. The University hopes that this will make the learning more challenging for students and will allow them to link learning to their personal interests.

Hanna Mulder – Comenius Teaching Fellow 2018

The pedagogical practical assignment - Often, students of pedagogy don't feel properly prepared for professional practice and don't make the link between theory and practice. So, first-year students of pedagogy at Utrecht University have to complete a practical assignment in which they work on issues from professional practice (e.g. from local authorities, youth services organisations, family support services, schools). Students take part in networks with experts from professional practice and academia. They observe professional practice, undertake an academic analysis and an analysis of the debate within society, come up with an evidence-based recommendation and link it back to professional practice.

Haza Rahim – nominated for the ISO Lecturer of the Year Award 2018

In 2016, Haza Rahim was awarded Utrecht University's Teacher Talent Award 2015-2016. In her teaching, she focuses on students' personal development and always tries to see things from their perspective and understand what motivates them. She also tries to make difficult topics like statistics interesting. She also believes that it's important to be aware of the cultural sensitivity and social engagement of her students.

Ghislaine van Thiel – Comenius Teaching Fellow 2018

Narrative medicine – medical students can improve their listening and observation skills by studying literary and personal narratives. Narrative medicine also improves their ability to empathise and prepares them for conversations with future patients. That's why the University Medical Center Utrecht is keen to include narrative medicine in the curriculum.

Sabine Uijl – Comenius Senior Fellow 2018

Student ownership at UCU; redesign of a personalized curriculum – University College Utrecht wants to enable students to make their own choices within the curriculum through an enhanced, personalised digital education system and an upgraded tutor system. This will make students more aware of how they learn and will allow them to link their personal goals to the learning objectives.

Marc van Mil – ISO Lecturer of the Year 2017

Marc van Mil was awarded Utrecht University's Teacher Talent Award 2013-2013 and was national Lecturer of the Year in 2017. As Associate Professor of Biomedical Genetics, Marc lectures on DNA within the Biomedical Sciences programme and also gives public lectures on DNA. Together with Annelien Bredenoord, he conducts research around how education must take into account the social impact of biomedical technologies.