Student Guidance

Coaching in the first year is focused on finding your way in the university, on discovering your optimal learning strategy, on choosing your electives. Your coach will be a senior student mentor, who went through that process him/herself.
Later on, we challenge you to reflect on the kind of engineer you want to be, your professional identity. And on what it takes, next to disciplinary knowledge and skills, to become such engineer. What will you need for such a career? Which skills do you want to (further) develop during your studies?
Many different activities are offered TUe-wide that allow you to explore and improve your talents and your career opportunities, see myfuture.tue.nl for a complete overview. These activities range from company lunch meetings at study association GEWIS to a training in public speaking or writing application letters.

Next to that, from the second year on the computer science program offers various coaching formats in order to help you in your exploration.

You are assigned a student mentor who will organize bi-weekly group meetings in the first two quarters. Here, you can raise all kinds of issues concerning your study. If you have not been assigned a student mentor, please contact your academic advisor.

The quarterly kick-off meetings by the academic advisors also constitute an important information source. Next to that, they have office hours and Q&A sessions for individual questions, check here how to contact them.

As a computer scientist you will surely find a job, but will it be the best job? Employers love people that take responsibility for their own development, that are equipped for life-long learning, that are confident with their professional identity.  

In principle, it is up to you how much you want to invest in exploring your future career and improving your talents, but to stimulate you doing so, we connect career orientation and coaching with some of the professional skills elements that are mandatory in each bachelor program at the TU/e. In particular, the assignments regarding the skill Reflecting serve as vehicles for career orientation and coaching by external parties.  
In your second year you will participate in alumni coaching, in your third year in recruiter coaching.  

Next to the mandatory coaching elements, you can opt for additional formats of coaching, with different focus and different intensity.  

1. On-demand coaching:  
during your entire studies, it is possible to ask career questions at the e-counter, or ask for a one-to-one meeting with a teacher mentor  

2. Intensive life skills coaching:  
If you want to further develop your life skills, you can join the biweekly group meetings with peers and coach Elisabeth Melby. Together with peers, you’ll discuss topics that are important to you. As a guideline, the book "If you're so smart, why aren't you happy?" by Raj Raghunathan is used.  

For participation in life skills coaching and/or career oriented mentor coaching, you have to enroll in Osiris through course code 2ICC2 (second-year students) or 2ICC3 (third-year students or older). You can then choose your format(s) in Canvas.  

If you have questions about coaching, you can e-mail Elisabeth Melby.  

Want to know more? Contact us at +31 40 - 247 2379 or via the contact form below.