Interview with Luuk Buunk on the ICCS micro-module
In the first week of February multiple honours and past honours students had the pleasure to go on a mobility week in the beautiful city of Barcelona. This was made possible by the Intercultural Competencies Micro-module and the ECIU universities. Interestingly, the team assisting the students included three former Board members of our association. On the train ride back after a week of personal growth and development, we had the chance to interview Luuk Buunk, the Internal Affairs of the 9th Board of H.V. Ockham.
In the following interview, we first explored Luuk’s experiences in Ockham and then dived into his journey with the micromodule. We inquired about his role as project lead, his overall experiences throughout the module, and how he would relate the module's content to Honours students.
As an addition:
The Intercultural Competences micro-module is a nine week-long collaborative course to help you determine and improve your intercultural competences level with lectures and team coaching from top experts within Europe, which are further applied into an international project on Citizen Science. This course is open for all ECIU university students and is completely free of charge.
The ECIU, is the European Consortium of Innovative Universities, a network of 13 universities united since 1997 by a common profile of shared beliefs, interests, and mutual trust.
The Interview:
Interviewer: Could you say a couple of words about your personal experience as a member and former board member of H.V.Ockham and what you found the most important takeaway from being in the association?
Luuk: The wonderful part of our association is that people with a diversity of perspectives from multiple disciplines and personal backgrounds, come together to discuss and be merry and learn together, as an addition from each other.
I: How did you get to work with the ICCS micromodule?
L: Employees of the honours office Marie Laure and Nelleke the coordinator of the Honours Programmes were already busy with the micromodule when I got along. They had the goal to create a micromodule within the ECIU context. I thought it made perfect sense, as sometimes, people might think universities are international when they just start switching to English. But that isn’t true, there are so many nuances, aside from language. In education we generally don’t have room to develop these intercultural skills in a guided manner. If we have such international ambitions, we should strive to guide the development of such intercultural competencies, and of course many of our students have their own international ambitions for their careers.
I: You have mentioned ECIU in your explanation. Could you elaborate on what ECIU stands for and how ICCS was made?
L: ECIU, is the European Consortium of Innovative Universities. It is a collaboration between 13 universities from across Europe that work together on many things of which educational innovation is the core pillar. Together the universities aim to develop education In which students have a large degree of freedom on what to learn when and how. At the same time we aim to increase the connection between education and society by letting students work on a wide variety of societal issues of their interest. It is an opportunity for students to work together with other students from across the continent and share ideas, learn from each other and make new friends. The ICCS micromodule was developed within the context of this alliance. The students from across Europe developed their competencies together.
I: What is in your opinion the biggest takeaway for a student? What can an honours student learn from this experience?
L: Every individual is different and the field of intercultural competencies is rather broad, so every individual student deserves a personalized takeaway message. Luckily, the micro-module is structured in such a way that students more or less decide for themselves in what area of intercultural competencies they would want to develop themselves further. Considering the student-centeredness of this education, it is not weird that this micro-module was initiated by the honours community.
-Luuk, Dóri-
