One of the skills an engineer will need in the 21st century is data management, believes the dean of the Bachelor College. “But in addition to the basic courses in math, physics, design, modeling and USE - all necessary to enable engineers to communicate with one another - there was no space for another course,” says Lex Lemmens. “Yet the engineer's ability to handle large datasets is becoming increasingly important, even more so than his or her ability to program.”

This has prompted the development of a basic course with the working title Data Engineering. Natalia Sidorova of Computer Science & Engineering is the lecturer responsible. We intend to launch the course in the third quarter of the academic year 2017/2018. “But that's very tight planning,” fears Lemmens. “On April 1st we will decide whether we can stick to this schedule. That's the deadline for completing the courses guide.”

To make space for this new course worth five credits, Introduction to Modeling will disappear as a basic course. It has been decided to move modeling to the majors, so that each discipline can adapt the course content. This change comes in response to the first large external evaluation of the Bachelor College, held in the first half of 2015, which revealed that it is no easy matter to create an Introduction to Modeling basic course that has generic appeal.

Lemmens: “It became evident that each discipline takes modeling in its own unique direction. Like the other basic courses, this one was intended to show that there are generic approaches for engineers. But, in fact, a biomedical engineer models differently than a chemical engineer. This makes it very difficult to place the emphasis on the generic aspect. That's why we decided to position the course differently in the program.”

Students who have not passed Introduction to Modeling by August 2017 will be given the choice of having two opportunities to resit or following the new basic course.