Next Horizons - Innovating Engineering Education

On 18 March, colleagues from across the 4TU universities gathered at JADS in Den Bosch for Next Horizons – Innovating Engineering Education. 

The day brought together (100+) teachers, educational developers, PhDs, postdocs and education leaders to reflect on what has been built in the 2022–2025/26 period and use the momentum to take the first concrete steps towards cross-institutional collaboration for 2027–2030. 

Plenary 

Marjolein Dohmen-Janssen, 4TU Federation Secretary opened the plenary session and placed 4TU.CEE within the broader 4TU mission of strengthening the impact of education and research through collaboration. She emphasised the role of engineering education in preparing talent to address societal challenges such as climate, health and energy. Drawing on her own experience across different roles in education, she reflected on how teaching, leadership and policy are all connected. 

Remon Rooij (CEE Chair and TUD Scientific Lead) reflected on what CEE has built in 2022–2026 and outlined the direction for 2027–2030, with a stronger focus on cross-institutional collaboration and visibility. With CEE as a driver of evidence-informed education innovation, centred on students, educators and learning environments, the next phase will be organised around four themes, with joint project teams across all 4TU institutions, all starting now. 

Victor Garcia Galofre shared insights from his PhD on educating responsible engineers to address complex societal challenges through entrepreneurial approaches. He highlighted the importance of designing research for real-world relevance and actively connecting with practice, policy and education. His key message: creating impact requires intention, openness and the willingness to step beyond traditional academic paths. 

Parallel sessions 

Throughout the day, exchange, reflection and action were central. Across the sessions, participants shared outcomes and tools from the 2022–2025/26 period and identified opportunities to increase impact across institutions. The seeds of initial ideas for cross-institutional collaboration were planted and above all there was time to connect with peers across roles and universities. 

Morning sessions (2022–2026) in the themes of Challenge Based Learning, Digital Literacy, Responsible Engineering and Teaching Excellence. Afternoon sessions around the themes of Society in Transition, Digital Learning, Professional Identity and Teaching Culture, for the 2027-2030 period. See below for summaries of each session (where available)

What's next? 

Next Horizons marked the starting point for building cross-institutional project teams for 2027–2030. The ideas and connections from the day will be developed further in the coming months through themed sessions and follow-up activities. 

A day like this asks for time and commitment, the 4TU.CEE Board wants to sincerely thank all participants for being at Next Horizons. 

Want to stay involved as ideas move forward? Select a theme to stay informed as project groups for 2027–2030 develop.

Society in Transition

Digital Learning

Personal Leadership & Professional Identity

Teaching Culture

CEE newsletter (x4 per year)

Morning Sessions

Reflecting on CBL/EEE in 2022- 2025/26- Judith Gulikers (WUR) & Victor Garcia Galofre (Tu/e) 

First a variety of activities and projects on this theme in 2022-2026 were shared: ranging from the UT teaching fellow cohort on CBL, to PhD projects, educational design/outcome projects, projects dealing with engineering content Challenges, the CBL webinar series and international CBL Conference. Next were two rounds of group discussion on four tangible tools and results with a focus on: “How can this tool be used in your own institutions’ education, research, policy and teacher professional development” 

• The Challenge up tool: (UT) evaluating and discussing the CBL-ness of courses/programmes 
• The Entrepreneural Education co-design canvas (TU/e & WUR) 
• The BK-Launch (TUD): platform for innovation and encouragement of entrepreneurship in the faculty of Architecture & the Built Environment 
• Unspeakable us: (TUD) a method to make (multi, inter, trans) disciplinarity explicit in challenges.  

There were lively discussions showing the unused potential of these tools across institutions! New connections and ideas were developed as well as an explicit sound to engage in more meeting to share these kinds of tools and directly work on their use within the other institutions 

Reflecting on Teaching Excellence in 2022- 2025/26 - Cindy Poortman (UT) & Remon Roooij (TUD)

The Teaching Excellence morning session focused on the collegial exchange of the results from the 2025 Teaching Cultures Survey (TCS). The TCS is a global collaboration among universities that are actively engaged in improving the recognition and reward of university teaching within academic careers. The survey captures academics’ perspectives on how university teaching is supported, valued, and rewarded at their institution. It is designed, in particular, to offer insight into how institutional policies and activities aimed at improving the reward for university teaching are embedded and experienced in practice.

Three waves of the cross-sectional survey have now been completed, in 2019, 2022, and 2025. The 4TU institutions participated in all three waves, and in 2025, with about 3,000 participants, ranging from PhD candidates to Executive Board members. The term ‘university teaching’ is used throughout this research to cover all activities relating to teaching and learning at universities. Examples include curriculum development and evaluation; teaching students; course coordination; pedagogical research; student supervision, support, and assessment; work on educational committees; coaching (younger) teachers; and the development of university educational policy/strategy.

In 2025, 17 universities took part in the survey, with 12,000 participants in total, spanning nine countries and four continents. The 2025 final report, Advancing the reward of university teaching: insights from three waves of the Teaching Cultures Survey (Graham, 2026), is publicly available. Institutions also receive an institution-specific report on the local results. These local results are the ones we discussed during the Next Horizons event to distil 4TU-wide lessons: conclusions, recommendations, concerns, and/or ‘things that work’. 4TU.CEE will bring these lessons to and discuss them with the 4TU.Education rectors. One of the ‘easy’ conclusions is that CEE’s earlier 2023 advice to the rectors, Room for everyone’s educational talents, contains many recommendations that are highly valuable, also in 2026, to consider for our community at large.

Four topics and messages stood out in our discussions:

Appetite for (further) change

The vast majority of our staff say they want education to be more important in promotion and academic careers. But institutional cultures change slowly. So, it was clear to all participants that we need to keep talking about the theme of teaching cultures and the recognition and reward of education.

Strategic thinking needed

As a community at large, we need to be much more strategic across several subdomains to strengthen our teaching cultures. We need to reconsider:

-our financial incentives: how do we finance education? And how does that give incentives (or not…) to achieve good, student-centred teaching practices?

-the composition of all kinds of review and selection committees: how well is education expertise represented in these?

-our supervisors and academic leaders: how do we educate/train them in the R&R of university teaching and evidencing pedagogical expertise, teaching quality, and impact?

-our role models: do we regularly spotlight our education champions and how their teaching achievements helped them in their careers? Our communities need examples and – by that – ‘proof’ that education expertise is recognised and rewarded.

-communication strategies: too often, education is less visible than research. Shouldn’t we prioritse education in annual review talks, in annual review forms, in vacancy texts, in institutional newsletters and websites, in our achievement portals (PURE)?

The crucial role of local leadership

It is crystal clear from the TCS results that local leadership plays a pivotal role in the R&R of education and promoting staff who excel at university teaching. With local leaders committed to the R&R policies, people experience that the time they spend on education is acknowledged and valuable to their careers. This means that the university management (CvB, HR, deans) needs to actively discuss with these local leaders why and how to do this in their local environments.

UFO Docent profile

The TCS data show that colleagues with a Docent UFO profile experience more challenges in their positions, careers, and promotion steps than average. Not all 4TU institutions have explicit HR policies for this UFO profile. Some institutions have difficulties ‘reading’ and understanding the Docent 1 level (“we do not have D1s”). We all experience difficulties with career expectation management and responsibility issues of Ds; quantitatively, e.g., how much time is spent on courses and interaction with students, and qualitatively, e.g., what kind of other education-oriented roles and activities? We all face challenges in (if and) how we would like to support Docenten in their path toward an Assistant/Associate Professorship, with an emphasis on education.

Afternoon Sessions

Personal Leadership and Professional Identity - Remon Rooij (TUD) and Gerald Jonker (RuG) 

The workshop Personal Leadership (PL) and Professional Identity (PI) focused on projects for developing knowledge and common ground with literature, case studies, exchange of experiences and discussions (2027-28) and projects aimed at (preparing) interventions at course and curriculum level and specific projects for teacher training (from 28 onwards).  

The central focus was:  

• Self-direction and autonomy in one's own learning paths, and lifelong / lifewide learning 
• Development of a personal vision of one's own field and of oneself (as a young professional) within that field  

In small groups, participants initiated project ideas identified with titles, objectives, working methods and envisioned outcome collected on posters, after which in a World Cafe set-up participants commented on other posters as well.  

The posters show that workshop participants identified a lack of shared knowledge on 

• Definitions and jargon that capture intentions (what do graduates attain) 
• Learning and training (if possible on PL and PI) 
• Application in an educational context (autonomy, lifelong learning) 

Therefore, the participants shared advice on a first step (the first years, 2027-28) to derive shared goals, ground drivers, and language, before continuing 

Teaching Cultures in Transition: Bridging Vision and Everyday Practice - Arjen Zegwaard (WUR), Marloes Vreekamp (WUR), Stefan Kooij (UT) 

The teaching culture session focused on exploring the ‘middle space’ between ambitious educational visions at an institutional level and everyday practice. Visions and strategic plans articulate the future of engineering education: educating responsible engineers, fostering interdisciplinary collaboration, integrating digital innovation, and strengthening societal engagement. At the same time, the daily reality of teaching is shaped by constraints of time, workload, institutional structures, assessment regimes, and disciplinary traditions. The aim of the session was to generate actionable input for the 4TU+.CEE strategic agenda, by sharing current developments, jointly exploring anticipated changes in the role of engineering educators and how universities can adapt to support these changes. 

After a brief introduction, representatives from every 4TU+.CEE partner pitched a highlight within their institution, such as activating classrooms, teaching communities and exploration to identify student profiles. Next, the audience split up into three smaller groups to discuss envisaged changes in engineering education and how universities must organize to enable and sustain these changes. On the latter, a wide range of ideas were formulated, including more focus on student needs, teaching in teams, more closely linking LLL and BSc/MSc education, and keeping working on bringing recognition and rewarding to a next level. Finally, in a plenary wrap-up the opportunity to share suggestions for the future 4TU+.CEE strategic agenda, led to several possible directions, starting with an even stronger connection between the 4TU+ institutions, sharing experiences and materials and further expanding of professional development. 

Society in Transition - Judith Gulikers (WUR), Eva Kalmar (TuD) 

The  presenters shared the contours of the new strategic period, content wise, and collaboration wise. There was an inventory of current projects and collaborations related to the topic, showing an enormous number of post-its. The consensus was; Let’s not start from scratch and learn from what we already know and do! 

The group engaged in backcasting: 

• What impact did we make in 2030? 
• What are the big questions we should be addressing as 4TU together 
• What collaborations or activities are required for this?  

 With the following main questions developed collaboratively 

• What is “the responsible change agent engineer”? At 4TU level and per TU?  
• What are the attitudes and mindset required for this?  How is this represented in our curricula and how are the scaffolded (e.g navigating uncertainty, empathy, care, openness etc). And how to create space within education 
• Related to this: how do we attract a wider variety of learners to the TU’s 
• How to build long-term reciprocal relationships with societal partners 
• Creating university structures that support and recognise collaboration between programmes, faculties, staff (within and across TU’s) 

Collaborations envisioned were, for example: collaborative working sessions, learning communities, staff exchange, collaborative student challenges. These ideas will be further developed in a dedicated Theme session in the autumn of 2026 .

Want to stay informed and involved as ideas move forward? Select a theme (or multiple) to join us as project groups for 2027–2030 are developed.