Excellence in Context by the Eindhoven Young Academy of Engineering

In this episode, we share a special fire-side talk recorded live during the Wellbeing Event of the Eindhoven Young Academy. Together with two senior researchers, we explored what makes team science unique, why it matters, how collaboration shapes excellence in academia. They reflect on how excellence in academia is often tied to an impossible idea: expecting researchers to excel at everything. The...

What does excellence in context mean for students, and for the people who teach them? In this episode, we sit down with a student psychologist and the university’s diversity and wellbeing officer to talk about what students struggle with, the support already in place, and what teachers can do without adding to their own workload. They emphasize that excellence is not a standalone goal, but somethi...

How to find your way in academics when every day you have to prepare for the unexpected? In this episode, two colleagues at TU/e openly discuss the often invisible context of their own academic career, in which they both have extensive caring duties for their children. They talk about how it has influenced and sometimes shaped their way of working and career, the relations with their colleagues, t...

Excellence is a term that is often used in academia. While we all probably have some idea of what this term means, it tends to remain superficial and generic. We therefore contend that to really understand and appreciate people, excellence should always be viewed in context. Without this, you often don’t see the complete picture, hampering appropriate judgement of someone's performance. Through th...

How do we sustain excellence, both at a personal and university level? In this episode, two senior TU/e colleagues dive into these questions by reflecting on their career paths, how they view themselves within the context of excellence, and what they think is needed to sustain and foster it. We learn that success often depends on others as well as yourself, and that we need people who can recogniz...

Is someone who obtained a personal grant excellent? And someone who didn't destined for failure? In this episode, two close colleagues at TU/e, one of whom obtained a personal grant, while the other didn't, engage in an open conversation about the differences in their career paths and the effects a personal grant (or the absence of it) can have on it. We learn that while personal grants can indeed...