VU Education Awards

The awards

• Student Talent Award

  The StudenTalent Award is intended for students who make a special social or cultural contribution, have a pioneering spirit and are committed to VU. A student with organisational, administrative, creative or sports talent - who can act as a role model. The winner will receive €2,000 and will be paired with a VU alumnus of interest to them. Only full-time final-year bachelor or master students are eligible, with no more than one year of study delay.

  The 2024-2025 finalists and award winner are:

  • Winner: Sofia Zampedri (Faculty of Law)
  • Finalist: Asmaa Elhassan (Faculty of Medicine)
  • Finalist: Radu Nicolae (Faculty of Science)

• Master's Thesis Award

  The Master's Thesis Award is awarded to the master student who can best argue the (potential) societal impact of their thesis research. Entries for the Master's Thesis Award are judged on (potential) societal impact, scientific quality and originality, relevance to the field and society, and alignment with VU's values. The winner of the Master's Thesis Award receives 2,000 euros and is paired with a VU alumnus of interest to them.

  The 2024-2025 finalists and award winners are:

  • Winner: Clara Luxardo (Faculty of Science)
    Thesis title: Pastoral socio-ecological systems in transition - a case study in the high-altitude rangelands of Mustang Nepal
    
  • Winner: Tianzheng Hu (Faculty of Science)
    Thesis title: Interpretable diagnosis of Schizophrenia using Graph-based brain network information bottleneck
    
  • Finalist: Jan-Hendrik Seelow (Faculty of Law)
    Thesis title: Why not talk about one's own country? An analysis of factors impacting the utilization of Art. 12(4) ICCPR in Dutch domestic litigation on residence permits for long-term residents

• Educational Innovation Award

  The VU Educational Innovation Award is intended for (interdisciplinary or trans-faculty) teaching teams that develop an innovative project that focuses on improving teaching practice at VU. Projects that focus on giving innovative substance to the VU educational vision also have a chance of winning the Educational Innovation Award. The context in which the collaboration between lecturers takes place is relatively free. Thus, lecturers can also involve support staff, students and social actors in their project.

  The Educational Innovation Jury will select two winning teams. The two winning teacher teams will receive €15,000 each. The Centre for Teaching and Learning will provide free assistance to the two winning teams in scaling up their projects.

  The 2024-2025 finalists and prize winners are:

  • Winner: the teaching team of Esther Schagen (Faculty of Social Sciences)
    Project title: Let's collaborate! Practicing collaboration skills through AI-powered avatar training
  • Winner: the teaching team of Wouter Werner and Sofia Stolk (Faculty of Law, in cooperation with Social Sciences and Religion and Theology)
    Title project: Visual Evidence
  • Finalist: the teaching team of Janina Klein, Rafael Wilms and Katie Stephenson (School of Business and Economics)
    Title project: Developing professional skills through debates
  • Finalist: Marina Bool (Faculty of Science)
    Title project: Customisation within students' academic development promotes motivation and study success

• Teacher Talent Award

  The Teacher Talent Award is awarded to the best lecturer as viewed from the student population and is coordinated by the University Student Council. Lecturers are nominated by Faculty Student Councils. Both junior and senior lecturers may be nominated for the award. The winner receives EUR 2,000 to spend on teaching. The jury determines an annual theme each time and there are three categories of sub-criteria: inspiring qualities of the lecturer, commitment of the lecturer and didactic skills of the lecturer.

  The 2024-2025 finalists and prize winner are:

  • Winner: Geert Schenk (Faculty of Medicine)
  • Finalist: Malte Max (School of Business and Economics)
  • Finalist: John Hogan (Faculty of Social Sciences)

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