TU graduate Emilia Pucci provided a three-word summary of the all-English opening of the academic year over Skype from San Diego. Over thousand students in Delft gave her a big round of applause.
Ms. Pucci was awarded TU’S first Inspiration Student Award by the Board’s director of education Anka Mulder for bringing a fablab with 3D printing equipment into a deprived neighbourhood in Rotterdam. Pucci thus challenged and stimulated the cleverness of school dropouts.
Earlier in the opening, Anka Mulder commemorated the death of four TU members in the past summer, two of whom were passenger of the MH17 flight that was shot down over Ukraine.
The opening drew an exceptionally large crowd of first year bachelor and master students who were spread over the auditorium and two lecture halls. The introduction weeks are known to be detrimental to one’s health, a wisdom that was illustrated once more by the incessant coughing from the public.
All new students were presented a Code of Honour by TU’s rector Karel Luyben. Recent cases of plagiarism (not in Delft) and the growing number of smartphone-enabled ways that students can cheat during their exams prompted the rector to choose a different approach – incidentally the theme of this year’s opening: try a different angle. In stead of totalitarian control Luyben resorted to a gentlemen’s agreement between student and university: as long as you respect the ethics, you may be proud to be a part of this academic community. May the document remind them of the conduct code in times of temptation.
Special guest of the event was former astronaut and current ambassador for sustainability André Kuipers. His view from space convinced him, like many other astronauts, of Earth’s beauty and vulnerability. Asked by presenter Jasper van Kuijk (TU researcher and stand-up comedian) how he had succeeded in realising his dream, Kuipers said to have no idea. Well of course motivation, patience, perseverance, frustration tolerance and social skills do help to advance. But you always depend on what people on the other side of the table decide. So, be prepared to grab your chance when it pops up, he advised.
Kuipers, who failed his first year in medicine because he was too involved in student life and ’leuke dingen’, warned today’s freshmen not to repeat that mistake since times and universities have become less tolerant toward freewheeling.
Start studying today. Or else tomorrow. That was the common advice from all speakers at the upbeat and optimistic event. Poorly controlled audio levels were the only glitch in the otherwise well-paced and entertaining welcome from the university to its new students.
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