Preface

Abstract

It is an honor for University College Roosevelt to host the 2017 Student Research Conference. Our main building, the City Hall from 1452, will be packed with some of the biggest talents in undergraduate research and distinguished keynote speakers. Your work has been meticulously reviewed by senior researchers from all Dutch research universities, many of which will attend the conference. Let me thank them for their hard and devoted work, without which the highly competitive environment of the Student Research Conference could not exist.

University College Roosevelt offers an English-taught, three-year bachelor program in the Liberal Arts and Sciences. The college is an independent foundation, but academically the program is part of Utrecht University. More than 40% of our just 600 students come from abroad. We have students from all continents - except for Antarctica. We are the only ‘stand-alone’ university college in the Netherlands. The stand-alone concept is wellknown in the United States, where many undergraduate colleges are located far from the hustle and bustle of big city life. Students come to University College Roosevelt to live in an intensive high -pressure cooker of academic and civic engagement for three years. After that, they are ready and yearning to jump to graduate schools around the globe. About 50% of our graduates go on to do a master’s program in the Netherlands, about 50% go abroad.

At University College Roosevelt, we firmly believe that undergraduate studies are about much more than gaining basic academic competence in one or more academic disciplines. Academic education is about academic and personal growth, as well as civic engagement. All three elements are about demonstrating curiosity and responsibility. Integrating active student-driven research into the curriculum is one of the best ways to foster curiosity and responsibility in students. Indeed, student-driven research puts a lot of responsibility for the learning process on the student. And as visitors to the conference know,
that may well be the best way of shaping great education. It is very good to see that this educational philosophy is flourishing in many universities and universities of applied science in the Netherlands. At University College Roosevelt, we are proud to host the Student Research Conference 2017, where some of the best work produced through student-driven research will be presented. I wish you success - and lots of intellectual fun!

Kind regards,
Prof. dr. Bert van den Brink