Lots of talent but little time

TU Delft officially opened the 2010-2011 academic year last Monday during a ceremony held at the Aula auditorium among a host of dignitaries and invited guests. The theme for the opening of the academic year was ‘No waste: moving towards a more aware and enriching future’. The premise being that energy sources and raw materials are finite resources.

Peter Voser: “More and more people will need energy for their laptops, ovens, cars….” (Photo: Sam Rentmeester/FMAX)

Nowadays, society as a whole is concerned with sustainability, pollution, efficiency and costs. Hence, wastage in any form is no longer tolerated, which is a fact that not only applies to the Netherlands but to the whole world, and also to educational institutions and students.

The ceremony began on a serious note. Outside the Aula the
employees’ union was protesting, armed with a street organ and banners, proclaiming that TU Delft was losing highly skilled scientific staff because the university would not offer higher wages. Inside the Aula, the president of TU Delft’s Executive Board, Dirk Jan van den Berg, had an urgent message for first-year students: ‘Get everything you can out of this’, was one of his opening lines. He spoke of a ‘difficult task’ in a world that was rapidly and irreversibly changing and in which the students must compete. And also about the good students in China and elsewhere - their competition. And about how the Netherlands was increasingly relying on knowledge and innovation - on the students then, the future engineers.

Peter Voser, CEO of Shell, the oil company, was the event’s keynote speaker. He was on hand to discuss the consequences of this ‘no-waste’ mentality for large international organizations like his company. According to Voser, there is much to be done: reducing energy use, discovering new energy sources and cutting CO2 emissions. “Because the world’s population is growing”, Voser said, “more and more people will therefore need energy for their laptops, ovens, cars….” This will all be highly reliant on technology - on the students, the future engineers.

Menno Bentveld, a Dutch television presentator, then led a panel discussion, in which, among other issues, the idea of time and time wasting were explored, with a particular focus on the responsibilities that students and the next generation of engineers must face.

Bentveld was full of praise for students as compared to the dumb outside world. You must cherish students, Bentveld said, but completing your studies could be done ‘a bit faster’ than the average of 7.2 years it takes a TU Delft undergraduates to get their degrees.
Ultimately, the first-year students received a series of strong messages. There is a lot of talent out there, but little time. No time to waste. So in which way will the new students choose to go? A good question for them to brood on during their first lectures.