A few minutes before 14 o’clock, students started entering room 4-004, on the 4th floor of the ITC Building. Up the stairs, the first door to the right, the classroom filled up quickly with new faces.
“Welcome everyone, I hope you are having a great introduction Week” stated Raymond Nijmeijer, course coordinator of the Natural Resource Management (NRM) specialization at the Natural Resources Department of the ITC Faculty. “Today I am going to discuss how this year’s course is going to look like, from the structure of the programme, the holiday dates and the course possibilities” stated Raymond.
During Quartile 1, there are three common integrated courses: GIS & RS for Geospatial Solutions, Geospatial data and Geospatial analysis and interpretation.
Raymond also explained that two parallel specialization courses start in Quartile 2; the first is Systems Approach for Management of Natural Resources[NR(I1] (coordinated by Iris van Duren), and the second is From Data to Geo-information for NRM (coordinated by Claudia Paris). Both courses last five weeks, alternating week-to-week between each other. After these courses, there is a winter break between December 24th and January 8th.
Quartile 3, from February 6th until April 21st, is a combination of a common course for the whole Faculty (Global Challenges, Local Action) and a specialization course, Earth Observation for NRM. The coordinator is Michael Marshall.
Quartile 4 is a combination of an elective and a specialization course. The specialisation course in Environmental Modelling: Changing Resources, with Wieteke Willemenen, lasts 11 weeks. The Natural Resources Department offers 3 different elective courses for Quartile 4. One is more focused on forestry (Role of forests in Climate Change mitigation and the use of multi-sensor remote sensing to assess carbon, with Michael Schlund), the second one more on agriculture (Spatio-temporal analysis of remote sensing data for food and water security, with Kees de Bie), and a third one on the environment (Species distribution and environmental niche modelling, with Thomas Groen). It is also possible to choose an elective from another specialization.
After the summer break, between July 24th and September 3rd, Quartile 5 starts, when students must write their Master Thesis proposal. Quartiles 6 to 8 is the period to write the thesis and finally defend it. During these quartiles, three elective courses can be picked by students to match with their Thesis topic. “Imagine that, for your Master Thesis, you want to focus on deforestation during a certain period[NR(I1] ; then you can choose the course Environmental Monitoring with Satellite Image Time Series in Quartile 6” explains Raymond. “You can also learn how to set up your own business in the course Entrepreneurship: a Bridge towards Geospatial Innovation, or if you want to learn how to communicate your research to the general public, you can pick Geo-journalism. These last two courses are offered during Quartile 7.” Raymond also advised learning what are the aims and the outcomes of each course, how assessments are done and how to properly prepare for the courses and the exams.
At the end of the presentation, the new students introduced themselves to the rest of the classroom. They all come from different professional profiles: GIS consulting, research, GIS analysis, chemistry, or environmental management, and some come straight out of their bachelor's degrees. They are also interested in different areas within Natural Resource Management, such as forestry, environmental science, and agriculture. After their Master’s, some expect to continue their academic career with a PhD, while others want to work in private companies or governmental organisations. However, they all agree on their aspirations for this year; “I am here to acquire new skills in Geo-Information, and most importantly, have a good time”, said one of the students.
From the NRS department, we want to wish a sweet academic year to all our new students.
