Your future

You’ve come up with a brilliant idea, but how can you substantiate your project and make it understandable for your stakeholders? That’s what you’ll learn in my classes!

Maartje

Teacher

I’ve been a teacher at Fontys Engineering for eight years now, and I really enjoy working here. I teach communication skills, also known as professional skills, in the Mechatronics programme. It might not be the first thing you think of when it comes to Mechatronics, but it’s incredibly important! You can have a wealth of technical knowledge and skills, but in the future, you’ll undoubtedly work in multidisciplinary teams. If you’re unable to explain or document what you’re working on, you won’t get very far. It’s essential, for example, that you can clearly explain a system you’ve designed to colleagues or clients, and you need to know how to collaborate with others to realise this system. 

I primarily teach first-year students and guide third-year students during their internships. It’s very rewarding to see how students change over those years. In the first year, I’m teaching a student, but in the third year, I really feel like I’m mentoring an emerging mechatronics engineer. In just over a year and a half, this person might even be my colleague!  

Besides teaching and supervising internships, I’m also a study coach. If you need extra help to reach your academic goals, I’ll make sure you get the support you need. I think, together with the students, about what they might need to succeed. At Fontys you can access additional individual coaching, training, and courses, as well as support from deans and student psychologists. Together, we figure out what you need to successfully complete your studies!  

I hope the students who’ve graduated learned a lot not only about their field but also about themselves. At the end of the year, there will be 150 people with the same diploma who are all looking for an engineering job. But those are 150 unique personalities, each with their own strengths and weaknesses. I hope they’ll keep their work interesting for themselves, each driven by their own interests, ambitions and worldview. 

Making mistakes is okay; that’s when you learn the most. If you put in the necessary time, you can achieve anything within this programme.

Omar

Teacher

I am a researcher at the Adaptive Robotics Lab and I teach various courses in the first and fourth years of the Mechatronics programme, including 3D modeling, Mathematics, and Digital Twinning. I’ve been doing this for five years now and have seen quite a few students come and go. When students start their first year, they are often nervous and uncertain. But when I see those same students again in the fourth year, the difference is striking – they are much more confident! In the first year, guiding students through their studies is still a large part of my classes, whereas by the fourth year, they are much more independent. 

I also studied Mechatronics at Fontys, and during my master’s programme, I worked part-time for Fontys. Now, as a teacher, I really feel like I get a “behind-the-scenes" view of the programme. There’s much more to training new engineers then students are aware of, like lesson planning, assessments, and meetings. I find it important for students to also get involved in these “background activities". Students should be able to have a say in their education. Having been a Mechatronics student myself, I can relate well to my students. 

What I want to pass on to new students is that making mistakes is okay; that’s where you learn. We start at a basic level and don’t expect you to know everything right away. You can achieve anything, if you invest the time. I hope that by the end of their studies, after earning their diploma, my students will have a solid foundation for their careers, both with a strong technical background and the necessary soft skills.