Supervising PhD students is often described as one of the most rewarding yet challenging aspects of academia. For many doctoral students, the supervisory relationship can be a source of frustration, confusion, and even loneliness. At the same time, supervision requires…
In the MSc program at Delft University of Technology, I teach and coordinate a course Assessment of Existing Concrete Structures. For this course, I still choose to assess students through oral exams (yup, every single one of them). This semester,…
This post is part of the series PhD Talk for AcademicTransfer: posts written for the Dutch academic career network AcademicTransfer, your go-to resource for all research positions in the Netherlands. These posts are sponsored by AcademicTransfer, and tailored to those…
In 2019, I started a major research project on bridge load testing. Then in 2020, a second big project on a related topic followed. Over the years, both have become long-standing parts of my professional life, with regular meetings and…
My interest in academic parenthood developed years ago, as I began to experience firsthand the dance between research deadlines, teaching, and school pick-ups. This personal experience led me to collaborate with international colleagues on a paper that examined the impact…
In July, I wrote about the rejection of a large proposal that had taken me 340 hours (of my one, precious, unique life) to put together, and how I felt about it at the time. In the mean time, I've…
If there’s one word that defined much of my academic work last year and this year, it’s proposals. As my main large research projects on bridge load testing are ending this year, I’ve been shifting my focus toward what’s next.…
For a long time, I had been thinking about teaching my class using a COIL (Collaborative Online International Learning) module. I’d read about its potential to bring international experiences into the classroom and liked the ideas of reciprocity, cultural exchange,…
When things feel overwhelming in academia (or life in general) I tend to think of all the doomsday scenarios. At the end of my PhD, my supervisor was slow to read (and thus approve) my thesis, and I found myself…
If you’ve spent time in international education circles recently, chances are you’ve come across the acronym COIL — short for Collaborative Online International Learning. At first glance, it may sound like yet another virtual learning format, some residue from the…
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