News in Brief – Delta 22

“Bahare Hedayat’s extraordinary courage and her persistent defense of students’ right to freedom of speech and expression are the reasons we are nominating her for the Student Peace Prize”, says Ligia Deca, chairperson of the European Students’ Union. Bahareh Hedayat (29) is one of the student union leaders still under arrest following protests against the policies of the Iranian government. On December 31st 2009 Hedayat was arrested on charges related to her student activism, including her delivering a message to the European Students’ Union to mark the 70th anniversary of the International Student Day on November 17, 2009. The Student Peace Prize is awarded biennially to a student or a student organization that has made a significant contribution to creating peace and promoting human rights.

Ranking
TU Delft’s BSc programmes in Electrical Engineering and Aerospace Engineering have scored well in the international CHE University Ranking. This ranking provides quantitative and qualitative information relating to both education and research at some 130 universities and 150 institutes of higher education in Europe. The CHE University Ranking does not just produce a single list of universities, but rather shows how the participating institutes and programmes perform in relation to each other according to 17 indicators, and how students and PhD candidates rate them. CHE divides the relative scores in three classifications: a top, middle and bottom group. TU Delft’s BSc in aerospace engineering earned a position in the top group of universities for 9 out of 17 indicators, while the university’s electrical engineering programme earned middle group university status for most indicators, although attained a top group ranking for three indicators: ‘international orientation’, ‘support during practical semester’ and ‘overall study situation’.

Erasmus popular
More Dutch students are travelling abroad as part of the Erasmus student exchange program. For the 2008/09 academic year, the number of Dutch Erasmus students rose by 17 percent, which is double the average growth rate (8.7 percent) for the other European countries. For the rest of Europe’s students, Spain, France and Germany were the most popular destinations, but Dutch Erasmus students preferred to study in Great Britain, where 631 Dutch students attended university.

Ethical energy
In order to meet the challenges of a sustainable lifestyle, multidisciplinary decisions with regard to energy provision and energy-consumption must be made. To this end, the TPM faculty will host a special conference, entitled ‘Ethics, Energy & the Future: Technology for a Sustainable Society’, from June 24-26. The conference will focus on the ethical, political and economic issues surrounding sustainable solutions.

Science loversThe Dutch are more interested in science, and feel that they are better informed about scientific matters, than other Europeans, according to a study commissioned by the European Union. Nearly half of the Dutch people surveyed said they were ‘very interested’ in new scientific discoveries and technological developments. In the rest of Europe, less than one-third of respondents expressed this view. Moreover, three-quarters (74 percent) of Dutch people said they agreed with the statement that ‘science and technology can solve problems’, compared to just 57 percent in the rest of Europe. In addition, nearly as many Dutch people (73 percent) said that science and technology can play a role in improving the environment, compared to 54 percent holding this view in other European countries.