Thanks to Bèta...
For almost 14 years, Lijst Bèta has worked tirelessly to make your education the best it can be!
Here’s a sampling of the things we have accomplished for students at TU Delft.
We have been also working on many new initiatives, more information here!
Educational achievements
Practice is essential when learning something new. Courses are no exception, so to be well prepared for your exams, you should be able to practice enough. Thanks to Lijst Bèta, lecturers are required to provide practice exams (with answers!) for all courses.
Motivated lecturers should get the opportunity to see their innovative ideas realized.
Therefore, thanks to Lijst Bèta, a total of €50.000 in grants are available to promote these
educational initiatives. This year, Gillian Saunders (RevAImping the Literature Research),
Arash Asadi (EDU-LLM: Responsible Integration of Large Language Models in Academic Teaching), Winfred Mugge (Bridging the skills gap: Employability skills in engineering
education), Nikolina Šoštarić (AI-enhanced programming education for applied scientists),
Wim Bouwman (Towards Better Learning: Evaluating the Educational Impact of Coherent
Curriculum Reform in Engineering education), Sam Rietdijk (A transdisciplinary education
service), and Steven Flipse (Transdisciplinary Teaching & Learning) were awarded these
grants.
Doing your minor abroad is a well-known option, but previously, you could only pick courses related to your field of study. Lijst Bèta thought this was a missed opportunity and arranged that students at various faculties are now able to do a minor abroad in a subject they find interesting, regardless of their own field of study. This also resulted in more spots for doing your minor abroad.
Thanks to the input that Lijst Bèta received from many students, we saw the opportunity to
add extra study places in Pulse. Together with the Facility Management at Pulse, we looked
at utilizing the available space more efficiently, and now 60 extra places are realized!
Currently, we have meetings yearly with the Facility Management to structurally realise
more study spaces in all educational buildings, including Echo, Flux, Fellowship, and Pulse.
Many students follow a mechanics courses at some point in their study, and those courses are often quite difficult to pass. To make these courses more doable, we’ve set up a program called PRIMECH: PRogramme of Innovation in MECHanics education. This program will be combining the power of all the teachers in mechanics courses at the different faculties, in order to significantly improve the courses by using new education techniques such as blended learning and flipped classrooms.
Thanks to Lijst Bèta, the TA trainings offered by the TU Delft Teaching and Learning Services
(TLS) has increased in capacity. We are working on increasing the capacity even further to
match the number of TAs each year. Lijst Bèta believes that TAs are an important part of your
academic journey for example during a practical or an exercise session. These TAs should be
given the tools and skills needed to help you get the most out of your education! Right now
Lijst Bèta has a pilot at Applied Sciences to improve the trainings further.
For many students, LaTeX reports and group projects go hand-in-hand. Overleaf is a great tool for collaborating on reports, but the free accounts don’t always give you everything you need. Lijst Bèta made sure all students at TU Delft can now use Overleaf Premium!
When you give feedback on a course, it shouldn’t disappear into the void as soon as you hit “Submit”. Thanks to Lijst Bèta, you can now view old course evaluations on Brightspace. We also want to make it possible to submit evaluations halfway through the course, so you yourself can benefit from your feedback.
Thanks to Lijst Bèta, many readers are now available as PDFs on Brightspace, so you don’t have to buy them on paper.
Thanks to Lijst Bèta, a database of all the Entrepreneurship courses is available for all
bachelors and masters students. With the help of the Delft Centre for Entrepreneurship,
YES!Delft Students and the TU Delft Valorisation Centre, more entrepreneurship elective
courses are made accessible to Bachelor and Master students. These courses are also now
available for ECTS. As a result, thanks to Lijst Bèta, entrepreneurship is integrated in the
existing curriculum to train well-rounded TU Delft Engineers, allowing students to get the
most out of their education!
The university has a wide variety of (online) courses and training on offer to help you develop soft skills and academic skills. Unfortunately these are scattered around different locations and webpages which makes them hard to find. Thanks to Bèta, you can find these courses through the career and counseling services.
At TU Delft, The Teaching and Learning Services (TLS) offers a free Teaching Assistant (TA)
training to enhance TAs’ understanding of classroom dynamics and equip them with
essential skills for their role. For this training, a student has to spend approximately 6 hours
of their own time. Thanks to Lijst Bèta, upon completion of this training, and by using the
certificate you acquired, you can ask for compensation for the hours that you spent during
this training. Hoping to decrease the threshold some students have for taking these
trainings, to increase the TA quality provided to you.
Upcoming students should know the entire financial picture of their study before choosing
to study here. It may be books, laptops, or materials for projects, all costs that are covered
so that you know what to expect. That’s why we have made it so that on each bachelor page
the costs of the study are indicated.
Having a lecture in a different faculty can be quite the hassle and frustrating. Thanks to Lijst
Bèta, the university now shows buildings on Google Maps to help students find their way
around campus. We are also working on getting rooms shown with indoors Google Maps to
make sure students can easily look up where they need to be and even calculate when they
need to leave to arrive on time!
The Teaching and Learning Services (TLS) at TU Delft offers a complimentary Teaching
Assistant (TA) training to enhance TAs’ understanding of classroom dynamics and equip
them with essential skills for their role. As a TA, it would be valuable to have written proof
that you have uptaken this training to add to your CV. Thanks to Lijst Bèta, upon completion
of this training, participants receive a certificate of attendance, validating the time they
spent to enhance their teaching capabilities. Aiming to add a motivation for more TAs to
participate in this training to increase the quality of TAs provided to you.
Sustainability achievements
When you graduate, you should be able to find solutions for relevant societal problems, like sustainability. But unfortunately not all programs give much attention to this important matter. This is why Lijst Bèta has worked together with Green TU to start up Green Teams at each faculty which focus on making the education and faculty more sustainable. The students themselves are the closest to their own curriculum and know best where possibilities lie to make a meaningful impact at TU Delft and eventually in society. Currently, all faculties have their own GreenTeam!
In the context of sustainability, currently in each faculty different groups of students and
employees work on the same ideas. They often lack communication which results in the
re-invention of the wheel. Thanks to Lijst Bèta, together with GreenTU, we initiated
Sustainability Task Forces in each faculty to improve the communication between different
groups. This consists of students and employees who meet regularly to share updates and
best practices and collaborate for a more sustainable faculty!
From 2021 onwards, FlexDelft had to implement a new pension fund. Lijst Bèta has
successfully pushed within TU Delft for a sustainable pension fund! The new pension fund of
FlexDelft implemented sustainability requirements for the investments of the fund. Finally, Lijst Bèta also successfully advocated within TU Delft that ABP (the employee pension fund
of the TU Delft) no longer invests in fossil fuels and other businesses that are not in line with
the UN Sustainable Development Goals, nor TU Delft’s own 2030 goals.
As sustainability impacts all choices that we make as engineers, we can’t be taught about it
in just one course; it needs to be an integral part of our education, woven through the
curriculum like a green thread. Thanks to Lijst Bèta, together with GreenTU, a project was
set up where student assistants work together with professors to make their courses more
sustainable by adding green examples or giving more focus to the environmental impact of
certain techniques. This project was further implemented in the whole TU Delft. That
resulted in more sustainability aspects implemented in more courses over the years.
Implementing sustainability in education can be time and financially costly for educators. In
some cases, even double work might happen where an educator on one end of campus is
developing the same idea as another educator on the other end of the campus. Thanks to
Lijst Bèta, a repository is created where educators share their best practices and their ideas
on how to implement sustainability in education. This repository makes it easier for
educators to get sustainability into YOUR education!
Since the TU Delft is an internationally well-known knowledge institution, our researchers
and others travel around the world to share their insights and discuss possible ideas,
theories or come to even better solutions. Furthermore, the university collaborates on many
levels with institutions and researchers from abroad. This, however, comes with a downside.
For this to happen, there is a need to travel. Often over long distances that can only be
crossed by planes. According to many researches and the CO2-roadmap of the TU Delft,
business flights account for 6.667 tCO2-eq or 13,9% of the total CO2-footprint of the
university. Although many people are already aware about the consequences of flying on the
climate crisis, it is often hard to come up with alternatives or other ways to compensate.
Furthermore, it is too easy to choose the, often, cheaper, quicker and more comfortable
option of flying. This is why Lijst Bèta, in collaboration with Green TU, has worked on
financial compensation measures for sustainable traveling. And this is now incorporated in
the TU Delft policy!
Lijst Bèta believes that sustainability should be a part of our daily life as students and future engineers. This is why Lijst Bèta has provided you with sustainability guidelines and instructions in you lab manuals to know how to work sustainability.
To promote awareness around the carbon footprint that traveling has and to encourage
employees and students of the TU Delft to travel sustainably. Lijst Bèta has successfully
provided a carbon emission calculation tool that allows you to know how much emissions
are there for each travel option when booking a trip via the TU Delft financing system. You
can find this tool via a link on the Green Travel TU Delft webpage.
Thanks to Lijst Bèta the printing default settings are now sustainable, for example black and
white and double sided printing. Lijst Bèta has also provided instructions on how to
sustainably print next to each printer.
Student housing & well-being
More and more associations are implementing a confidentiality person within their associations to help members that run into problems with for example transgressive behaviour or an unwelcome atmosphere. This is a really good development! To support this, Lijst Bèta has setup systematic trainings and supports for these persons so that they are well informed and taught for when a situation comes up where they will need to step in!
Do you have a question or need help, but are you not sure where to go at TU Delft? Don’t
worry – Lijst Bèta has set up CONNECT – an approachable contact point for student affairs! At
this point student hosts are ready to help you with questions about your studies, personal
development or well-being. At the moment, CONNECT is located in the Aula and we are
looking to be more visible on other places on the campus as well.
The university offers quite some support for students with questions, concerns or complaints. However, it is not always clear to whom they should go with their questions. When students cannot find the help they need, it could have a negative impact on their studies and their wellbeing. Therefore, we have been working in close cooperation with the entire Student Council and Career & Counseling Services to improve the findability and accessibility of the support. A roadmap highlighting the different support points you can access and where to find them, instruction videos and an online platform where you can learn anywhere at any time are some of the projects that Lijst Bèta has been involved with.
It can be hard sometimes to meet new people. Thanks to Lijst Bèta, Goin’ was picked up by
TU Delft. This app allows students to, for example, post invitations to eat together, and
create chat groups for students that want to run or bike together. With this, Lijst Bèta is
bringing students a bit more closer to each other!
Student Psychologists are an integral service in the TU Delft to provide mental help to the students. Currently, a student has to wait for months to get the required support. Lijst Bèta looked into why is that the case, one of the issues was that the building for psychologists does not have enough rooms for appointment to be carried out by the psychologists. Thanks to Bèta, 300,000 € have been given to renovate the psychologist building. By the beginning of May 2025, they will start building 2 extra rooms dedicated to student psychologists.
Through you journey as a student you deserve to get professional help. At the TU Delft, student psycologists are provided to the student in order to give them the appropriate help if needed. Currently, you have to wait for months to use this service. One of the main reasons, that waiting lines are long, are the number of student psychologists available. Thanks to Bèta, 3 more student psychologists to increase the number to 12 in total. We are also working on increasing the number even more!
Thanks to Lijst Bèta, the chill spaces at Pulse became a shared large living room for all
students. Together with the facility management of Pulse, more sofas, board games and
comfortable seating were added. This improves the space to have a more chill vibe for
students to take a break, socialize with friends and be used for more than just eating your
lunch. Lijst Bèta, with the rest of the student council, is also working towards realizing more
chill spaces on campus at other buildings.
When coming to Delft to study, wanting to learn Dutch is a logical step for many students. But the study load is high during the semester and full offline courses can be hard to follow. Lijst Bèta and the language center have worked together to offer a Dutch MOOC to give you a good start in learning Dutch, for free!
Lijst Bèta believes that leadership & soft skills as dealing with stress and time-management
should be a part of curricula. As a starting point, we have initiated the Golden Well-being
Thread, which started in 2024. In this project, we explored how to give tailored sessions to students to provide them with these skills. Lijst Bèta aims that well-being and leadership
skills are woven into your education & student life like a golden thread! Currently, the Career
and Counseling service is looking at ways to expand this.
Given the little knowledge of Delft and the appropriate contact points, combined with the
chaotic schedules students face during the OWee, it is crucial to offer students a way they
can seek advice or report incidents. Therefore, Lijst Bèta has made sure at least one or two
confidential advisors – with the right training – are appointed during the OWee.
The TU Delft has psychologists, great. Unfortunately, the questionnaire used to get an
appointment was long and tedious. This demotivated students who required help. That is
why, thanks to Lijst Bèta, the questionnaire is now re-evaluated and shortened so that it
does its job without increasing the barrier for you to ask for help!
In the past it used to be that only one person per time was allowed to leave during an exam.
This was a problem due to multiple students needing to either use the bathroom, get insulin
or any other procedure that they cannot perform in the exam room. Thanks to Lijst Bèta, you
now can get an exemption on how many students are permitted to leave the exam room.
Diversity, inclusion & social safety achievements
We work hard to ensure every student will be welcome on campus and feel safe and accepted. Thanks to Lijst Bèta the flag protocol has been changed at the Aula to ensure that there will always be a progress flag waving at the heart of our campus.
A contemplation room gives students the opportunity to meditate, pray, reflect, or
otherwise find peace. This promotes student well-being and the inclusiveness of the
university. Lijst Bèta believes that you should have the proper equipped space to relax and
reflect when you need to. Thanks to Bèta, there are four contemplation rooms (Aerospace,
Library, Bk and X) on campus and one extra room in the development process.
As a society, we’ve grown a lot in diversity these past years. However, on some points there
is still a lot of room for improvement. This is sadly also the case when it comes to our
understanding of consent. At student parties, especially when there is alcohol involved, lines
get blurred and personal boundaries are crossed or not respected. It is therefore important
that everyone starts with the same baseline, and become conscious about how their actions
can affect others. That is why Lijst Bèta has provided trainings, like ‘Gelijkspel’, on this right
at the beginning of the freshmen weekend, so everyone can feel safe and respected.
In the ideal situation the percentage of international TU Delft students is reflected by the
same ratio in the Central Student Council. Statistically, at least 2 of the 10 seats should be
taken up by international students. However, participating in TU Delft Central Student
Council is harder for international students in comparison to their Dutch peers. Some
international students pay very high tuition fees, which are not fully compensated. This is a
big obstacle for them to candidate themselves for (faculty) student councils. Lijst Bèta strives
for equitable treatment of Dutch and international students. Voices of international students
should be heard. For that reason we will continue our lobby for the position of international
students at TU Delft and on a national level. We already accomplished more bilingual
activities at the umbrella organization of Dutch student councils. We have consistently had
international and diverse student representation in our party, highlighting the importance of
sufficient representation in the Central Student Council. Thanks to Lijst Bèta the Executive
Board has made an exception in the tuition fees policy, enabling an international tuition
waiver for 3 non-EER students participating full-time in the student council, thereby having
to pay only the Dutch tuition fee.
Lijst Bèta believe that the TU Delft should embrace its queer community and provide help to create awareness across its campus for them. We work hard to ensure every student will be welcome on campus and feel safe and
accepted. Thanks to Bèta, structural funding is now available for Purple Friday for study associations to use to provide activities making the campus LGBTI+ friendly and to celebrate sexual diversity
and make people feel seen!
The issue of consent and social safety has been an increasingly important issue among
students. That is why Lijst Bèta together with the university has first started a large campaign
in Delft to inform students on how to deal with transgressive behavior and inform them
about practical information and tips regarding different kinds of harassment. This campaign
was done,in 2022 , this campaign has been repeated in 2023. Now, after the report of the
inspection on social safety – Lijst Bèta is currently working that TU Delft starts taking the
responsibility for this initiative being organised yearly.
Lijst Bèta has brought up the issue of lack of gender-neutral bathrooms on campus despite the existent need among certain students. Lijst Bèta has successfully lobbied for the introduction of gender-neutral bathrooms on campus and the Executive Board will introduce these types of bathrooms on campus in all educational buildings by the end of 2025.
Lijst Bèta believes that facilities and buildings on campus should be accessible for everyone. This is why, with the help of Student Onberperkt & the Diversity and Inclusion office, Lijst Bèta has created a focus group that visits each building to check if it is accessible or not. The visits results in a report after which Facility Management of each building are advised to find solutions to increase the accessibility of their buildings.
The TU Delft campus is becoming more diverse by the day, and the more diverse it becomes the harder it is to make it inclusive to every group. Lijst Bèta has created an advice group to help integrating diverse students by voicing their needs higher up in the hierarchy. To make sure that equitable tools and treatment is there for ALL students!
The more diverse our community at the TU Delft gets, the harder it is to know what is inclusive to which group especially in communication. Lijst Bèta strives for inclusive language and believes that we all need to be guided on how to be inclusive to each other. This is why, with the help of the Diversity and Inclusion office, Lijst Bèta has created an inclusive language live document. This document has the ways on how to address different groups in an inclusive way. The document is also alive meaning that it can be updated frequently to include more information on how to make the campus a safer environment for everyone!
When coming to Delft to study, wanting to learn Dutch is a logical step for many students.
But the study load is high during the semester and courses in the summer are expensive.
Lijst Bèta and the language center have worked together to offer a summer Dutch course
with the same depth as the semester course, for free!
Right now we’re also working on making more Dutch courses available by making the
amount of courses proportional to the amount of international students studying at our
university.
When coming to Delft to study, wanting to learn Dutch is a logical step for many students.
But the study load is high during the semester and full offline courses can be hard to follow.
Lijst Bèta and the language center have worked together to offer a Dutch MOOC to give you
a good start in learning Dutch, for free!
Diversity and inclusion remains an important but underfunded issue within the university.
Thanks to Lijst Bèta a Diversity & Inclusion (D&I) Grant open for all students has been
created to give students and organizations the ability to apply for funds to support
grass-root initiatives that intend to improve the overall state of diversity and inclusion within
the university in whatever way possible.
Various groups and individuals at the TU Delft, ranging from students to staff members and
others, are working hard to implement Diversity & Inclusion (D&I) policies at the university
and to improve the overall community regarding D&I matters. The Diversity Office is
essential for making and implementing D&I policy at all levels, including the highest
organizational levels. However, having a central office that is appointed for specific themes is
not sufficient. D&I is a delicate topic that needs a unique approach for every situation. There
is not one solution that fits all. Therefore, we are working to implement D&I teams at every
faculty, consisting of both students and employees to ensure sufficient representation. Right
now, there are D&I teams at ME, IDE, EEMCS, and ABE. We are working hard to expand that
to all faculties!
Thanks to Lijst Bèta, D&I-team members are now compensated for their work!
The TU Delft community has many diverse and international associations but they often lack
a voice or support from the university. Together with the D&I Office we have setup a
quarterly meeting with many of these associations to ensure the needs and wants of
different communities within Delft are adequately represented and heard.
When new buildings are built, only the bare minimum of accessibility of these buildings is
considered. With the help of Studdable Delft, Lijst Bèta is ensuring that all of the current and
new buildings and facilities are accessible for all of the students. Lijst Bèta helped forming
committee of students from Studdable Delft amd lead by the study climate group (bunch of
employees) to visit old buildings and engage the community of the TU Delft to try them out
from the lens of a person with disability by blind folding them or by having them try to
access the building in a wheelchair. The reports of such visits are reported to the facility
management of the building, ESA and CREFM to work on making these buildings more
accessible. Also, the same committee is involved in talks whenever a new building is planned
that makes sure the knowledge they gained will always be taken into consideration when
building a new building.
How does our student population really look like? Do students face discrimination? Does
everyone feel welcome? Do students face discrimination in groups projects? All of these
questions are important to know the answer to if we want to become a more diverse and
inclusive university. The diversity at TU Delft is hard to measure, restricted by privacy
regulations. This makes it hard for employees in management to know what is needed to
make the campus a more welcoming one. In collaboration with the Diversity and Inclusion
office, Lijst Bèta has started a survey that is done every three years to check acts of being
excluded on bases of language, gender, disability or others. The survey is made and analysed
by an external company to ensure less bias in the questions and the results. We have
published the results and conclusions of the survey conducted in the academic year
2022/2023:
https://www.tudelft.nl/en/2024/student-portal/survey-of-our-students-perception-of-inclusi
veness
We are currently working on implementing these results into initiatives and policies within
the D&I office multi-year plan to turn your input into actions. We are also preparing for the
new survey to be published in the academic year of 2025/2026!
At Lijst Bèta, we believe that each student is diverse and deserve to receive a tailored treatment that fits to their background. For that, we are working on ensuring that psychologists and counsellors at the TU Delft get culture and diversity awareness trainings yearly.
A bystander is a person who witnesses socially unsafe behaviour being done to another. To create a strong and safe community, each student should be able to recognise this behaviour, react sensibly, and discourage any further such actions. This year, Lijst Bèta is planning bystander training at student and study associations to ensure that each and every individual is able to react appropriately and help one another, simultaneously developing a socially protected and monitored community. In 2024 Lijst Bèta held the first bystander training at student and study associations, with a lot of positive responses! In the future, we will continue those.
Since the Central Student Council (CSC) discusses many issues that are important for all
students, Lijst Bèta thinks it is vital that the CSC is a good representation of the TU Delft
community. This is why we always strive to have public meetings in English and maintain a
diverse representation within Lijst Bèta, which includes international students. The
candidates of Lijst Bèta understand your legal rights and duties in order to get the best
results for you. This ensures that every student feels represented and is involved in the
processes and decisions that shape the university.
The TU Delft campus is becoming more diverse by the day, and the more diverse it becomes
the more we should work on making it inclusive to every group. Lijst Bèta has created an advice group to help integrate diverse students by voicing their needs higher up in the
hierarchy. To make sure that equitable tools and treatment is there for ALL students!
Unfortunately, there are many students who encounter unwanted behaviour. The TU Delft
already has a “klachtenprocedure” (= formal complaint process) in place. This procedure
enables the victim of assault to make a formal complaint accusing the perpetrator of doing
them wrong. This procedure is not anonymous, quite intense (it involves a lot of parties and
time) and only can be initiated by the victim. This means that it is mostly used in cases
where there is a clear perpetrator and victim, and the charges are of considerable
seriousness to go through with this process. This makes the threshold of filing complaints
extremely high and many smaller incidents of microaggression go unnoticed, even though
they are of importance. This causes problems, as the university does not have a clear
picture of what is happening at the university and cannot act accordingly. In addition to the
“Klachtenprocedure”, Lijst Bèta has been advocating for a “meldprocedure”, an informal
complaint procedure, since 2022. This process enables anyone (the victim, bystander, friend
etc. ) to report an incident without wanting any repercussions. This can also be done
anonymously. In 2022 we already pitched this to the Integrity Office, and followed up on it
since then with little progress from the past integrity office. When the report of the
inspection was published in 2024, lots of momentum was given to such initiatives. Lijst Bèta
took this opportunity and together with the student council pushed more for such a
procedure. Now, April 2025, TU Delft has launched this reporting point.
To attract students to come study at TU Delft, the university has an outreach program at high
schools. In the past, the university used to only focus on a small group of high schools in this
outreach, leading to a group of students that isn’t very diverse. Thanks to Lijst Bèta there
now exists a group of people (IDEE) that is working on making this outreach more broad and
diverse!