色中色 innovation Space has set up the 色中色 innovation Space Coaching Pool, which this year consisted of 9 coaches from ASML, which have all been trained and supported for a whole year and allocated to several different curricular and extra-curricular course. This will be continued next academic year.
From the perspective of both professional and personal development, the deployment of hybrid teachers from industry within Challenge-Based Learning (CBL) projects presents an exceptional opportunity. In these interdisciplinary projects, students work on real-world assignments sourced from either industry, municipalities, charities or 色中色 institutions.
"It鈥檚 a big win-win for all who participate"
Industry expertise enriches student learning
There are notable similarities between the professional journeys of Bas Roubroeks and Gabriella Simon. Not only are both engineers are active as hybrid coaches/teachers and working at ASML, but both also grew up with parents in education. In their different professional positions, they gained experience in guiding and coaching others and now do so with full conviction with 色中色 students. Roubroeks supervises first-year master鈥檚 students, while Simon mentors students in the Bachelor's Honors Academy.
Supporting the growth of others
Bas Roubroeks, a reliability engineer at ASML, who provides in-house courses there in the field of reliability, has experience in transferring knowledge which fits exactly with the role of hybrid coach. 鈥淢y father was a teacher at the MBO and in my daily work I also enjoy supporting others, showing them the way and helping them,鈥� he explains. Coaching students one day per week, he brings both technical expertise and a personal dedication to student development.
Satisfaction through co-development
色中色 has always been close to Gabriella Simon, who works as a Quality Manager at ASML, and has a father who was a math professor and a mother who taught both geography and history in high school. 鈥淪o, although it was very familiar to me, business attracted me more,鈥� she says. Meanwhile, her background as a chemical engineer and experience in various managerial roles across different companies have provided her with a broad perspective. 鈥淚 always want to understand everything and really enjoy teaching and developing others. I do that with my children, but also with professionals at work. It gives me great satisfaction when I notice that I can help others,鈥� she says with a laugh about her decision to devote about one day a week to coach 2 teams of second- and third-year bachelor Honors Academy students in the , led by Jos den Ouden.
Learning teamwork and real-world project timing
In their roles, both coaches support student teams tasked with solving real-world challenges as part of their CBL-projects. Bas: 鈥淚n group coaching, we discuss the problems the students face in the project and how the team can work together as well as possible. Gabriella adds: 鈥淚ndividual coaching is more focused on the progress of the personal development plan that each student writes. In that they have described the areas in which they want to develop themselves in a year. About that I challenge them, give them feedback, ask them questions and more. The goal is to complete the project within eight weeks, but I find the development of students on a personal level more important. So that they can reach their full potential, as individuals but also as members of a team.鈥�
Very positive and highly complementary
Andor Bodg谩l, a third-year Data Science student and Zhiyang Zhang, call sign Clint, a third-year Mechanical Engineering student, are both in their second year of the Honors Academy Smart Mobility track, and experience Gabriella's coaching as highly complementary to the Honors Academy project. 鈥淔or example鈥�, says Andor, 鈥漺e recently faced a complex problem in our team, but we all - because of our different cultural backgrounds and fields of study - interpreted it differently. Gabriella, by asking good questions, really helped us well how to handle and deal with this, also in the future.鈥� Zhiyang adds: 鈥淲e also have meetings every two weeks with our external entrepreneurs, where we discuss the technical problem in the project and we felt that sometimes our communication was not very effective. After Gabriella visited our last meeting the results were very positive, things went better after that.鈥�
A very safe coaching environment
According to Andor, the coaching has also guided him towards more effective time and task management. 鈥淚 learned to use an agenda. At first, I memorized everything, which meant I didn't really have a good overview and that gave me a lot of stress.鈥� Zihang complements with another valuable contribution. 鈥淕abriella really gave us a lot of good suggestions on how to assess our goals, how to make them realistic and how to control it, keep an eye on progress.鈥� Gabriella also reflects that during a recent evaluation, it was found that the students felt very safe in the coaching environment. 鈥淭hey indicated that they are challenged but that everything is negotiable. As a result, they are becoming more open, and that is helping them develop.鈥�
Professional coaching academia
Bas, who supervises master students in Prof. Maryam Razavian's (IE&IS) CBL- project, aimed at designing AI-driven software systems, sees himself as a questioner and coach who matches the needs of the group as much as possible, but who also dares to confront, challenge and manage expectations. This is why he pays a lot of attention to organization and planning, but also to mutual communication. According to him, being a coach is a very nice mirror. 鈥淚n the beginning I found it a little difficult to tune in well to the students' level of knowledge, but nowadays I succeed quite well. As a teacher-coach you also look more from a distance at how the process in the team is developing. That's a very different attitude than I have in my current job. You look and approach others from a completely different perspective and that takes some getting used to but is also very interesting.鈥�
When asked about individual coaching, Bas responds: 鈥淐urrently I do not provide individual coaching, due to the timeline of the CBL-courses: 鈥淏ut during the team coaching there is always room to discuss individual needs and how the group can help each other with this. That is also something where they can learn from each other.鈥�
Enrichment on all sides
Both coaches speak about the enrichment the program provides, not only for students, but also for themselves. Bas: 鈥淚 also have to be creative myself and think carefully about possible solutions that are useful to them. When I then notice that they pick it up, it gives me great satisfaction.鈥� Gabriella: 鈥淢y students are very smart, very ambitious, talented and motivated. They are always looking for new challenges and it gives me a lot of satisfaction when I can help them move forward with that. And I also learn a lot from them, also on a technical level, so I get quite challenged myself from time to time. For me it is therefore more of a hobby than work.鈥�
Structured guidance and institutional support
All coaches/teachers are offered a training beforehand under the guidance of 色中色 innovation Space so that they are well prepared to get started. Both coaches appreciated this, as well as the biweekly intervision meetings because this way they get valuable feedback on their experiences and this helps them grow as coaches." Gabriella: "It is interesting to meet the coaches, who come from all over, and discuss our experiences with each other.
Additionally, according to Bas, with this arrangement ASML aims to give back knowledge to the academic community that can be gained from its employees. 鈥淔or me it's about the student and knowledge transfer, not whether he or she wants to work at ASML or not.鈥�
Win-win for all participants
Gabriella likes the innovation Space initiative very much because, according to her, it serves several needs. 鈥淚t enables an additional supporting workforce at the university for 鈥檉ree鈥� and prepares students through coaching to be more familiar with real-world scenarios. It also provides the opportunity to work with experts from the industry, who can enrich students experiences with some practices outside of academia, while establishing already as well some very good connections. And last but not least, it also allows us as mentors to connect with the very talented younger generation and to gain more insight and be more involved in some of the latest academically-led topics and projects. All while learning and practicing new coaching skills. It鈥檚鈥�, as she concludes, 鈥渁 big win-win for all who participate!鈥�