Arriving as a student in an unknown country can be a daunting experience. The IDE-Compass is a lively English-language newsletter which focuses on new students in the faculty of Industrial Design Engineering
The colourful periodical is issued three times per year. Covering a wide range of issues, the content is designed by the faculty’s own students to meet the expectations of their first-years to the campus.
It was started four years ago as a joint-initiative of both IDE’s International Office and Marketing & Communications department. Now in its 12th edition, IDE-Compass is organized by its two chief editors, Willemine Biemond and Ellen Vroemen. Biemond is an international cordinator in IDE while Vroemen is the internal communications advisor.
Topics covered by the newsletter include practical content such as TU-introduction week, airport pickups, information on joint master programmes, local events and places to go. But it also addresses topics of academic interest to the students like national competitions and initiatives. The newsletter recently covered the Reinvent The Toilet initiative, a Bill and Melinda Gates’ competition to rethink sanitary installations in Indian urban slum areas. And it provides useful advice to acclimating to Dutch culture, including what to wear on Queen’s Day.
In an effort to ease student transitions, the newsletter aims to reach the students in the crucial gap between being admitted and their actual arrival at the TU Delft. Even before pending students have arrived in the country, they are sent the magazine. The idea is that the magazine can help bridge the period of waiting between admittance and arrival and facilitate better bonding with the faculty. By keeping up to date on this wide range of information from the onset, the new students will be less flustered by their new environment.
It was the students of IDE who insisted on the newsletter. Initially, it was suggested that a Facebook page would be sufficient. The students, however, felt that a newsletter would be better than a social media page. The personal touch of IDE-compass is endorsed by the many students who were initially helped by it and who may now also be part of the staff.
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