Working together on real-world challenges
Do you have a challenging question, innovative idea, or societal issue that deserves attention? Collaborating with students could be the solution.
Submit your case
Society Based Education (SBE) connects society and education by turning real-world questions into student projects. WUR students work on these projects as part of their courses. Your organisation gains access to fresh insights, new ideas, and potentially future employees, while students immediately apply their knowledge in practice. This creates a true win-win situation. Submit your case or issue and we will arrange a meeting to explore how we can work together. Please fill in this form and send it to us via e-mail.
We aim to connect students with their future professional field. This means that all kinds of businesses and organisations can submit questions. Common partners include municipalities and government bodies, NGOs and other non-profits, multinationals, startups, knowledge institutions, and more.
You can collaborate with students on a wide range of topics. We are looking for issues that address complex societal challenges, such as biodiversity, climate change, the circular and bio-based economy, food security, or healthy societies.
When you submit a question or project, we will arrange a meeting to get to know you and your work, and to understand your needs. Depending on the type of question, we will try to link it to a course offered at WUR. Once a match is found, we will align the research questions with you and draft a project proposal that students can take on when the course begins.
The project doesn’t need to be very extensive: we will help you translate the problem into a student research assignment!
- Time available during the project
- Resources, such as background information or contacts
- A small budget (for some courses)
- Curiosity and a willingness to learn
How does it work?
Throughout the academic year, there are various bachelor’s and master’s courses in which students work in teams on real-life cases. These are short-term assignments where students work inter- or multidisciplinary, full-time or part-time, for periods ranging from 3 to 12 weeks (depending on the course). Project ideas for students can be submitted at any time.
The largest course is Academic Consultancy Training (ACT), in which a group of master’s students with different areas of expertise act as consultants for a real organisation. Each year, ACT is offered five times: in September, November, January, March, and May. More information about this course can be found on our ACT page.
What a collaboration looks like
The diagram below provides a schematic overview of the procedure and the steps we take after you have submitted your idea, question, or project description. Please note that the timeline and steps of the collaboration may vary depending on the course and the type of question.
The diagram illustrates the collaboration process. During the first 1–5 months, in the definition phase, you submit your idea and have a meeting with SBE. During the project development phase, feedback is provided on the draft project proposal, after which a final project proposal is prepared. This is followed by project selection and then project implementation (starting with the first meeting with the students), which takes approximately 3–8 weeks. The project implementation concludes with a final presentation of the project results, followed by an evaluation with SBE one month later.
Questions or interested in collaborating?
Feel free to get in touch with us.
