 Good day! Welcome to our webinar on electrical and electronic engineering and applied computer science programs at Saxon University of Applied Science. My name is Davide and I am a student assistant at the International Office. I am here today with Edmund and welcome Edmund. Thank you. So my name is Evan Schaefer. I've taught here at Saxon University of Applied Sciences for the past five years. I teach in electrical engineering in the Applied Computer Sciences department, focusing primarily on subjects to do with renewable energy. Next to that I'm also an advisor and coordinator for the Saxon Smart Solutions Semester and I do research in the chair of sustainable energy systems. Thank you. So what is going to be the structure for our webinar? We will first get a bit deeper into the electrical and electronic engineering program, see what are the highlights of this curriculum, and then move to Applied Computer Science, then talk about internships and this smart solution semester, which is probably something you haven't heard of before. And then talk about the career opportunities. If you have any questions during the webinar, please feel free to ask them in the live chat. So we will now start with the electrical and electronic engineering program. The reason why I came this far to study is because the tuition fees, first of all, were affordable and also I wanted to get a different cultural experience than back in my country. So I thought it was a great opportunity to both study in English and get to know another culture. Plus the education here is of a higher level than in my country, so that was of a greater advantage. I think it's a really good idea to study abroad because you get to know a lot of international people, first of all. So you're not only surrounded by people from your own culture who speak your own language, but you also get to know different cultures and different people coming from different places over the world. And you're all sharing the same scenario, which is both studying in another country and overcoming some difficulties that involves. So I think it's a great opportunity that everyone who has the chance to take should do. Here there's a lot more opportunities than back in my country. To begin with, the government provides with scholarships for people who cannot afford to pay their own tuition fee. Plus if you're still struggling with your money, you can also work and get a grant from the government that helps a lot of people to come here to this country to study. That's something that we students appreciate a lot from how this country works. Other opportunities, for example, are during the middle of Europe, and then you can travel basically all over. Also transportation here within the country is really affordable for students, so you can get to know many, many cities and do short trips. And I think that's pretty good for us. For me to overcome the cultural difference was not so difficult because I travel a lot back when I was 16 to 18. I travel a lot around the world, I would say. But still it's a struggle to go to a country where you don't speak the language. That's the main difficulty also, the weather and all the activities are different. Also the culture of the people and their behavior is different. So I think you just have to approach people from this country and try to adapt to what they do. And also see why they do it this way, right? And I think that's a good way of interacting with the culture and overcoming the difference between yours and theirs. Even when the studies are taking out of my energy and then you should go to classes, prepare for your exams, and also do your internship and final thesis, my ultimate goal is to have my own company and work for myself. And I think that not only the studies and what you learn prepare you for that, but also the fact that you do an internship and a thesis, which is like a final internship in a company, allow you to see how the market works, right? How companies work, how projects are done within a company. Plus you also study with a lot of international people so your network is quite broad. So that allows you to have different options and different points of view about the different topic or business, whatever you want to work in. The studies help me to get to my final point both by providing me theoretical and practical work. So on one side you have all the teachers in your school who help you solve doubts, gain more knowledge about something, or they can give you tips about how industries work so you can decide by yourself if it works for me to go there or not. Plus when you go to a company and you do an internship, then you can really see how is it working there, right? So you can have an overview of how the industry where you want to work is. Before going there and say okay, I will work like an engineer, then first you go and say okay, how is it working as an engineer, and then you see it by your own eyes. Electrical and electronic engineering. The first thing that comes to my mind is, is there a lot of math? Well it's a question we get asked a lot. Dealing specifically with electrical engineering, yes, math is involved. I would say it is one of the main building blocks of our course. The thing about it is though, we don't really expect any prior knowledge from our students. We get students coming from all over the world to follow this course. So it's harder for us to know 100% exactly what kinds of prior education, prior mathematics that we'll have. So our solution to the problem is, in the first year and then part of the second year, we basically start maths from more or less from scratch. And we only teach the maths that you specifically need for the course. So something like algebra is very important. Algebra will be one of the first maths courses you have. But it's only going to be specifically linked to the elements that you will need to complete electrical engineering. Okay, cool, thank you. And so does this, does it go the same way also for other subjects? So I don't need to have any prior experience for any of the subjects? No, not really. I don't know if you remember your high school physics, but we start pretty much everything from zero. If you know a little bit about something like programming or you know a little bit about something like hardware, what a PCB is, maybe how to solder, that's okay, but we do start everything from the beginning. And also when I think of engineering, it comes to my mind definitely a lot of theory. I come from Italy and in Italy we have a very theoretical based academic experience. How is it here? Like is there a lot of theory in the program? Well, it's kind of one of the very nice things about studying the Netherlands. The approach here is more from the practical side and it's a university of applied sciences. So generally what will happen is in a quarter of a period of 10 weeks, you'll have theoretical subjects and next to those theoretical subjects, you'll also be dealing with practical problems. Usually the practical problems in the first year start very base. It might be something like programming a coffee machine, for example, that's one project we traditionally... That's nice. Yeah, that's very cool. Something like that and then in order to complete the project with a group of people, so let's say somewhere between four and eight people, you have to think about the theory that you're taking at the moment and the theory you've done in previous quarters and apply that to the specific situation. So it's kind of very, very nice because you're not just taking exams and then moving on to the next thing, you're really thinking about the application of the theory in real-life situations. That you do constantly then throughout the fourth year, right? Right. Yeah, okay. That's really nice. And also you have two specializations, right, in the electrical engineering program. Yeah, so we have two specializations. They have abbreviations which I won't go into now, but we have one that goes more in the power and automation direction. So think renewable energy, sustainable energy. Think about PLC automation, kind of automation of factories, things like that. So one direction and the opposing direction, you look more towards microcontrollers embedded programming, embedded systems and things like that. The way I usually like to think of them is if you have a scale going from hardware to software, the power side or the automation side is more on the hardware side and the embedded system side is moving down that scale more towards the software. So you kind of get a balance of both. In the energy side, we do focus more on hardware and the embedded system side and the microcontroller side, it's kind of a 50-50 balance, I would say. Okay, so if I'm more interested in the hardware part, I should choose the energy part of the program. Correct. And on the software part, yeah, the software part, then the other part. Correct. That's the general way our students choose. One more point I should also mention, specialization is from the second year, so you get an entire year to kind of see what's going to kind of what your specialty is, what you like to do, and there are some certain key subjects that you can focus on and if you like those subjects, you're more predisposed to like either the microcontroller side or the power side. And do I also get some recommendation because I can imagine they're still like in the first year, you're a bit overwhelmed with so many different new subjects and still maybe you cannot make up your mind and take the decision for your next years. Like, do I get some inputs also, some support from teachers in the choosing part? Definitely. You can always ask the teacher from specific subjects what they think. Every student that starts at Electrical Engineering gets a specific mentor that they will follow them through the four years and this is something you can always discuss with them and if they don't know the answer, then they'll always be able to point to the person who does. So it's a decision that we really do want to help our students make. Yeah, that's wonderful. Thank you. We will now have a video interview with Marius, the alumni of the Electrical and Electronic Engineering program and see what Marius has to tell you. Hi, my name is Marius Tanachel. I'm from Romania. I studied Electronics Engineering at Saxion and I've graduated in 2014. Looking back at the time I had at Saxion, one of the most memorable experiences I had was testing one water cannon. I had to build the electronics for the water cannon and basically you put water balls in this big box and they launched them really up in the air and I had to figure out how to test it, so I took it to the parking lot and I think by today you have about 50 water bottles on the rooftop of Saxion. The most valuable thing I learned at Saxion was actually entrepreneurship. From an early stage the teachers teach you how to think as a company. So all the projects we did were established with a secretary, there was a CEO, there was a CTO, everything was done in an entrepreneurial way. With the cot I think it's quite easy to cover because of the Dutch labor market. We're now in Amsterdam and the parking are much higher than it was in Esfade. To live, for example, I came from Romania where I already studied for two years but I was looking for something more practical and Saxion offered just that. You had your own toolbox, you had all kind of machinery you could use and all kind of equipment and the teachers saw that you put that effort and they rewarded you for that. They gave you even more interesting things to do. So it was definitely worth the effort. The curriculum that I studied was quite broad. You could have went into straight technical things then you would have been specialized but you also had an overview so I had a course in business management, I had a course in also economics so you have also an overview and that really helps with what I'm doing now is now I'm doing consultancy for smart city applications and I can go really technical and I can build prototypes which have been done and I can also have an overview and discuss with the client the bigger project. Alright, so we have just seen what the electrical and electronic engineering program is about but then applied computer science, is there again a lot of math for engineering because this is something that scares a lot of students. Yes, it's one of the questions we get specifically from applied computer science students and people who want to do that perhaps. Yes, there is some math involved. The first year for electrical engineering and applied computer science are identical with the exception of three subjects. So there is still math involved but the application of math is slightly different. Electrical engineering, it's more of a math based approach anyway. Applied computer science, you have to have a knowledge of the math but it's used less. So I would say I wouldn't let the math scare you off. Yeah, that's very good. And then can you tell us something about the program itself? Like what is like the most important subject for example or like the core point of ACS? Well, I would say when describing electrical engineering we were talking about a scale going from hardware to software and when you look at ACS, it's very much focused on the software side. So electrical engineering is still more hardware based and electrical science is way down the scale more towards the software side. Describe it as being software with a little bit of hardware. The actual subjects you do things like Java and databases and things like that. We have the advantage of working together with electrical engineering for the first year. As I said all the subjects except for three are identical. What that basically means is if you're in doubt which one of the two you should choose you can always switch from one to the other. Students tend to do that. They find out that they like programming and they like hardware more. So within the first year with no extra charge and it usually doesn't cost you any extra time you can switch from one to the other. And I would say like we see sometimes students who want to focus more on the software side don't find that they have enough of that in electrical engineering and make that decision. And then you mentioned Java actually. Do students require previous knowledge of programming language? Or do you start from scratch as it is for the math? We start from scratch generally. We tend to notice students come in with some prior knowledge but it's definitely not needed. But I would say if you're looking to start this course and you kind of want to know about programming my advice is always download a tutorial make a hello world and see for yourself before coming. I did another word as well myself. It was in C++. C++, yeah. Okay, good. And then is it also very practical, very practical subject? Well it's along the same lines as electrical engineering so you have the practical side, the theoretical side and then the practical side and also the projects themselves. You'll be working in labs as well exactly like electrical engineering. You'll be doing some work in laboratories. You have your own laptop so it's not just the theory itself it's also the practical implementation of that theory. Okay. And so yeah, as we said it's from the same, it's a program from the same academy and so do you want to say anything else about the differences between the two programs or do you think we'll say just with hardware if you're more interested in the hardware part and electrical and electronic engineering, right? And then the software part is applied computer science. I would say that. I would also say kind of one of our main advantages is the fact that we do it this way we're the only college in the country that offers applied computer science in the same department as electrical engineering. So one of our advantages is that we have a lot more hardware knowledge. So what does that mean? If you're looking more towards maybe programming front ends, things like web design, things like that you should definitely be looking at software engineering but if you're looking at more of a microcontroller practical approach to kind of programming for directly to hardware I would definitely say you should be looking at applied computer science instead. Okay, yeah, I think this is really clear and if you also have like more specific questions you can just ask them in the chat. Okay. So then we now move to the third and fourth year where you can choose for your smart solution semester or have your internship and then write your thesis and do your minor. My name is Javi Kutsela. I'm professor of international world technology at Sachsen University of Applied Science and I am presenting the customer of this project. The assignment was derived from a large project called Green Source and Green Source is a project lasting almost for six years in total. It's supported by the government of foreign affairs including companies from the Netherlands and also counterparts in South Africa. The role to support the company is that they have to supply the components. In fact, Green Source is a concept. It's a concept of harvesting rainwater by means of collecting it under artificial pitch by means of some kind of grates and that water is being filtered by a membrane system and then offered to primary and secondary schools as drinking water. So in fact, what we are doing is combining say drinking water with sports. So the subtitle of Green Source is also sports for water. I am Michael Kohertman. I'm studying chemical engineering and we worked on this project the last 20 weeks. I am Nick Krupp. I'm from Haagsbergen and my previous study was mechanical engineer but in a lower level than I'm doing now. I don't know if it was really technical. I was more the social guy in the group, I think. Hello, I'm Supreet Sudhama. I'm from India. Go abroad for the studies. For example Erasmus or European Project Semester. It would help you a lot because you are going to share your ideas. You are going to share all your cultures. You are going to speak a lot of things. You are going to meet a lot of people and you are going to socialize yourself. That makes you open up yourself. So I feel that it's a very good job. Hello, my name is Luis Pérez Martínez. I'm from Cartagena, Spain and I study now telecommunication engineer in a specialty of telematics. So my background is more informatic with telecommunication. My role in the project is head of monitoring part because our project is a filter water system so it was very important to see in real time if the systems work properly and what are the values. It is about rainwater harvesting. So in South Africa it has been already installed right now all around four to five it has been installed. And now this is about the pitch. So we have the soccer pitch over here. It's about when it rains under this soccer pitch all the dirty water is going to be stored and all the dirty water is going to be pumped to the filtration system over here and then it is going to provide a good water to drink. That's really cool. So we have to see how the first and the second years look like but how about the third and the fourth which type of subjects or projects or just activities can I expect? Well in the third and the fourth year you don't have any or very many traditional subjects anymore. Those are all in the first and the second year. The third and the fourth year are built from four different categories. You have a suction smart solution semester, a minor, an internship and then a graduation internship. Okay, I've never heard like many of them as a prospective student but I'm really curious what is the smart solution semester actually about? Well the Saxon smart solution semester is relatively unique in the country where the only university of applied sciences that does it. We have projects that come from either our research institutes here at Saxon or they come from companies in and around the region. Projects that are inter or multidisciplinary by design. Meaning you can't solve them as just an electrical engineer or just as a programmer. So we have groups of students, four to eight students that work together full time for six months and they try and come up with solutions to these problems and actually design or develop something. The interesting thing is because they're multidisciplinary you have to work together with people from different academies. So as an example one of the projects I had last year we had students from electrical engineering computer sciences, industrial product design, small business, fashion and textile was also a part of it. It's a strange combination. But you'd be amazed how many combinations there are especially being an electrical engineer or a programmer. You're kind of the backbone of a lot of different types of projects that almost happen in other spaces. So it's something really interesting that we can offer our students learning how to work in these multidisciplinary environments which is really crucial especially going forward and going on to the job market and it needs to come. Yeah exactly, that's also what I wanted to say because you prepare these students to work with people with a different background. So to understand the differences now they can complement each other when working on the same project. Yes, learning about what other people can do what they can offer you and also the idea of being able to explain what you can offer someone else that's a very very crucial skill that you will need later on. Yeah, awesome. And then talking about orientation to the job market we have the internship and what can students do for the internship like does Saxon give them the company or are they free to choose their own company they like? Well for the internship itself we keep it relatively open so we want students and are actively promoting students to go into companies I myself get lots of invites from companies and lots of assignments from companies I pass these along to students it's a responsibility of the student themselves to find an internship but we do help with that. They can choose companies in the Netherlands, in the region many of our students go abroad so they go to places like Vietnam and China on top of that if they don't necessarily want to do one in a company they can also choose to do one in one of our research institutes here at Saxon so doing maybe something with a subject that they're really passionate about maybe they did a project for the Saxon Smart Solutions semester and then they think oh well I'd like to continue with that I'm going to do an internship for the same chair or for the same company. There is something that really caught my attention you said that you receive a lot of assignments from companies does it actually mean that companies really value the quality of the education of the programs? Yes, definitely. We have way more assignments than students generally it can be sometimes tricky for students coming from abroad to find something if companies prefer German speakers that's a point as well but on the whole we find a lot of companies are really willing to open themselves up to international students it also kind of helps that we're very flexible with the third and fourth year so we don't say you have to do this in a specific order the only thing we say is that graduation has to be at the end even there there are a couple of exceptions to do with the minors anything else within the third and fourth year you can basically decide when you do what so if you find that internship but it doesn't start until September and it's February now maybe you decide to do a minor right now or maybe the Smart Solutions semester projects we're offering maybe there's not that one that you'd like but you do see the minor that's starting in another college that starts right now you're more than free to do that as well. Great and then you mentioned the minor but how does the minor actually support the development of the knowledge of the student like is it a boost also for the internship and then the future career of our students? That's a good question something that we look at as well as we want to make this a personalized course which is why we give so much freedom in the third and fourth year but another thing we offer is the idea of a minor that can be filled in with more or less anything you want to do there are some boundaries of course but you can look at it from one of two perspectives you could either look at it from trying to broaden your base of knowledge so maybe do something that you wouldn't do with an electrical engineering maybe with mechatronics, maybe go towards small business we have a lot of students who want to become entrepreneurs who want to start their own companies so they go and do a minor to do with small businesses or starting their own companies that's one way of looking at it, trying to broaden your base of knowledge the other way you could look at it is to deepen your base of knowledge so let's say you really like control engineering or you really like programming in a specific language you could choose to do robotics and mechatronics which is a lot more in-depth and detailed than you would get in our general the first two years of our course thank you and then it ends with the graduation, right? so students have to write the thesis that I guess everything is practical here it will also be practical oriented, right? it's not just theoretical well yes and no, students are free to choose what types of graduation assignments they want to do so we see kind of this broad scale again of more of a design concept, a design realization so actually building something or doing steps in a design realization so maybe just the design and not actually the implementation and on the other side we see students going more towards applied research so trying to do more background research into if a concept is even feasible and then you have everything in between so generally for all of our graduate assignments you see those two components and you're kind of free to choose whatever assignment puts the emphasis on the component you like the most so if you're more into design more, if you're more into actual based research maybe you have the ambition to go and do a master's degree later on you could focus more on the research side nice, so there is quite some flexibility it's definitely a graduation assignment okay, great, thank you and now I think it's time for us to see what are the career opportunities afterwards alright, so after your graduation you have this beautiful piece of paper very important, your Bachelor of Science, right? so what can you do afterwards? you can maybe choose to continue with another study program or you can start your career right away how about a master, like can students go right away into a master program? well they can do master's degrees afterwards the only thing is if you're going to go to a traditional university for a master's degree after being here you have to do an extra six months what they call a change program the good thing about the program though is especially if you're going to go to the University of Trenta so the local, theoretically university we have here you can do that six months as part of your minor so instead of doing the minor as we just described you could decide to take this change program instead and then directly after your Bachelor's start with a master's degree and there are a wide variety of master's degrees that you could do we have students that decide to continue with electrical engineering or embedded systems or computer science we have students that want to go more towards the management side maybe more towards a specific element like sustainable energy and you can do that here, you can do that at other universities across the country or abroad right, and what if instead like after four years of studying still a very practical approach to my studies I really cannot wait to put my knowledge into practice and apply it in the workplace so can I go straight away into and start my career actually like is what I studied suction enough to have a good job most definitely, the thing about electrical engineering and applied computer science is it's a very broad topic the very broad topics in general meaning usually when you go to a company a lot of companies will have training shifts for six months a year, two years and then it's the time where you're really going to start focusing on a certain subject we give you the foundation and the overall idea of what electrical engineering or applied computer science looks like and then you have to kind of pick out the specific parts you want to use when you go into a job and we see that our students are in very very high demand especially in the region and in the country an anecdotal story I have last year so in June I had twelve graduate students ten of the students had been hired by the company before they finished the graduation oh my god that's incredible and it's not an exception we see it's sometimes a little bit tougher for international students to get into this position especially if they want to stay in country but definitely not impossible especially if you're willing to maybe learn a bit of Dutch you're going to work in a more international company maybe you're going to work for an international company and they'll find you a job in the country that you come from who is from China he worked for Philips and then he eventually was offered a job Philips Shanghai things like that occur quite often our students are so in demand and there is such a lack of engineers right now that it's really a good marketplace when you first get into the marketplace and you also have big names because Philips is not like a very small company so you can do a good career and develop yourself further you also have other examples of company because maybe our prospective students are really curious to know how to start dreaming we have definitely Philips I myself work at Siemens and I know students who have worked at Siemens we have a Siemens division not too far from here also companies like maybe slightly less known but also as big a company like Eaton Eaton is a multinational company that makes certain hardware solutions focused on the energy grid and they hide two of my students about halfway through their graduation and I have two other students now and I fully expect them to be offered jobs then you have the bigger companies as well you have again ASML for example and Eindhoven ASML is the biggest chip producer in the world I believe the biggest or the second biggest but then you also have a lot of small companies and start-ups we kind of have a good start-up culture in this region so then you're also going to look at have smaller companies be able to take those opportunities as well or maybe even start your own company that's wonderful so whether you are looking to start already your career or like you still want to continue with a master with an electrical engineering program and apply computer science you will always do a good choice definitely great now we have a short video for you with some tips for international students my name is Abidjenio Mersha I am an associate professor of unmanned robotic systems at the research group of mechatronics here at Saxion University of Applied Sciences my specialization is on aerial robots which people actually commonly know them as drones one of the things that actually distinguishes from scientific universities are the research and role for the educations that we give here are more applied oriented so it's not really fundamental research or fundamental theoretical education more on the applied so basically our role here at the University of Applied Sciences is actually to bridge the gap between the scientific universities and the industries so basically we are the technology innovators technology developers so you get a lot of possibilities here at Saxion University of Applied Sciences in order to not only learn but also to actually develop new things even have a good feeling about existing systems using all the components that are actually available it's not only theoretical but it's more a combination of a theory with a practice for example the things that you actually see here one of the research lines that we have at the research group of mechatronics is unmanned robotic systems which I am the associate professor for and it covers the unmanned robotic system covers the unmanned aerial robots which are commonly known as drones ground robots and even including underwater robots in most of the projects that we do together with companies together with other international partners be it in European projects or national projects or regional projects that we actually collaborate with industries regional industries or national or maybe even European wide industries we involve students and students are actually involved in every of the activities the applied research activities that we actually carry out and students this is an innovative recharging station for aerial robots it's really new and innovative which actually enables to use Aerial Robots 24-7 by being able to recharge it and this is what has been also developed not only by researchers that we have but researchers and lecturers together with students and the students get the possibility to actually work on real innovative activities it's really important to emphasize here that the students actually get also the opportunity to work closely with companies so at the early stage they get the experience the working ethics and also the professionalism that they actually are supposed to have when they join industries that's actually the unique thing that we provide here at section the unique opportunity compared to other institutions alright thank you AVG and do you have any deeps or anything you would like to add then I think I have two things I always get the question should I do this course and I always ask people like does it look interesting to you to be an engineer the world is really in need of engineers right now I'm not going to lie and to be honest if I'm really honest I don't even really care what type of engineer you want to be just be an engineer the thing about it is you really have to kind of like engineering so it should at least look in a passing fashion interesting to you if you don't have enough knowledge about what both these courses are so far that's fine you'll find out when you start but I would say as a tip only do this if you do have a passing interest please then if you do think you want to be an engineer really do engineering my second tip is one that I always say during our open days one of the biggest mistakes our students make is the idea that they're going to start their career when they get their diploma and walk out the door it's actually not the case you start your career the minute you walk inside these doors when you walk in the building you're going to meet teachers who have a long list of people that they know and companies that they have a lot of knowledge you're going to meet people who you're going to run into for years to come I still run into my old classmates from college I graduated a few years ago a lot of people hung around some people I run into conferences you kind of run into the same people you're starting to build a reputation now and build kind of a network and you're starting to really think about what you're going to do for the rest of your life so please don't make the mistake of thinking your career is going to start when you're done it really starts when you walk in the building wonderful, yeah I can really fill your passion for engineering and also for teaching thank you very much so you've had a chance to submit your questions via the live chat but if you want to submit your questions directly to students we have a dedicated platform it's called Intusuction you can find it on intusuction.nl the link is below the video you have the chance to send us questions related to admission, housing insurance via social media you can use Facebook or Instagram whatever you prefer and still you find the link here thank you very much and thank you Edmund for being here with us and we really wish to welcoming you soon at Saxion and the best of luck with your current study and the start of your future career thank you have a good day learning about studying at Saxion that leads to a lot of questions who could help you find answers better than our current students on Intusuction you can ask your questions to more than 250 Saxion students to Saxion is an independent platform our ambassadors will give you a genuine answer to your questions so are you still unsure about your study choice or do you have questions about one of our programs visit Intusuction.com