Lecturers

Today’s students will be tomorrow’s agents of change. As a lecturer, you can equip the next generation of professionals with the tools to tackle the major challenges facing our society. Not just by conveying professional knowledge to students and helping them acquire new knowledge, but increasingly also by enabling them to discover ‘sustainable’ working and entrepreneurship.

Whether you want to start a dialogue with your students about a new economic mindset, get them thinking about increasing sustainability and multiple value creation in business processes, or help them discover that marketing can also be harnessed to goals other than profit maximisation: we’d love to exchange ideas with you. Our people have already developed a wide range of directly applicable tools which you, students and those in the professional field can use. We are also happy to help develop new tools, methodologies and more. When research is done in such a way that the results are immediately applicable in educational and professional practice, we can truly make a difference to our society. Together we are creating tomorrow’s economy.

Currently, we still measure prosperity mainly in terms of economic growth and financial progress. The use of natural resources and people is regarded as inevitable, and we prefer not to dwell on their exhaustion and exploitation. But the earth and society are approaching their limits. For this reason, a transition from a ‘narrowly-based’ to a wellbeing economy is essential.

A wellbeing economy includes everything people consider to be of value – materially and financially, but also things like education, health and a pleasant living environment. A wellbeing economy also means that everyone, everywhere, now and in the future, has the opportunity to enjoy that kind of prosperity themselves. This calls for a new kind of entrepreneurship: entrepreneurship that contributes to human and natural values and strives to repair the damage done – or better yet, prevent it. The transition to a wellbeing economy calls for a different way of looking at things, for new knowledge and insights. In education, too.

We want to work with lecturers to make a difference to society. We are here to help lecturers make their lectures and tutorials on subjects and methodologies around a wellbeing economy and new entrepreneurship relevant, nuanced and up-to-date. For example, by acquiring theoretical frameworks and conceptual knowledge on which a lecturer can base lectures and tutorials. But also by working on research with partners from the professional field who are willing to work with our educators and are able to quickly turn the results of research into practical applications. We make the new knowledge we acquire available to the education sector in the form of methodologies, models, etc. We are also happy to assist with educational aspects such as module development by making revisions and suggestions and by sharing contacts with you. We also offer opportunities for your personal growth and development. For example, in the knowledge networks of our research groups, in which lecturers temporarily perform practical research roles as lecturer-researchers. If you would like to know more about that, you can always contact us for an introductory chat. Or take a look at our options for practical research courses at Avans or in the DPO research community.

In concrete terms, we work with lecturers by offering:

• Knowledge from our research groups and our practice-based research;
• Practical tools, methodologies and models which you can use or adapt for your own teaching;
• The opportunity to conduct your own research or be part of research projects as a lecturer-researcher;
• Graduation options for your students, from research internships to graduation workshops;
• Help with the content of lectures and tutorials or developing educational units;
• A partner for developing new educational material in co-creation;
• Refresher courses on themes around new entrepreneurship and a wellbeing economy;
• and more.

Everything we do, we do in co-creation. We talk to each other, explore how we can help each other and, if there is a ‘match’, we start working together.