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Bram Kuijken
Bridging education and practice
Bram Kuijken is the founder and Chief Education Officer of Master Challenge, a platform that aims to bridge the gap between university education and industry.12 He created Master Challenge to offer educators a hassle-free way to find real-life company challenges and match them with their students.56
Background and Mission
Bram Kuijken's mission with Master Challenge is to disrupt higher education by preparing students for the real world.4 The platform allows university lecturers to easily integrate real-life company challenges into their courses, giving students the opportunity to work on practical problems while providing companies access to talented young minds.14
Professional Experience
As the founder of Master Challenge, Bram Kuijken:
- Leads the company as Chief Education Officer1
- Works to close the gap between academic learning and industry needs3
- Offers a solution for educational institutions facing challenges in providing practical experience to students7
Platform Features
Master Challenge, under Bram Kuijken's leadership, provides:
- A hassle-free platform for educators to find real-life company challenges
- Easy matching of challenges to students
- Opportunities for companies to solve short-term challenges while connecting with talented young people1
Bram Kuijken's LinkedIn profile can be found under the username "bramkuijken," where he shares insights and updates about Master Challenge and educational innovation.27
Highlights
It's no secret that many educational institutions (in The Netherlands) are facing a frightening combination of governmental budget cuts and declining student numbers.
What I noticed (in my role as founder of Master Challenge) is that the initial response involves cost-cutting measures such as staff layoffs, contract non-renewals, and reduced funding for educational innovation. However, I propose a different approach: educational institutions should focus on generating additional income from non-governmental sources.
While educational institutions are not commercial enterprises, they create substantial value for companies and other organizations. Not only in terms of research but especially also through education. For example, the past few years I've been connecting companies and organisations to student teams who work on real-life assignments from those entities as part of a course. This is often referred to as Challenge-Based Learning.
Students find this approach incredibly rewarding. It allows them to apply theoretical knowledge, develop relevant skills, and expand their professional networks. Companies also benefit by gaining access to fresh talent and having their challenges addressed. Many companies are willing to pay a fee for such collaboration, as some educational institutions have already discovered. Precisely this can be part of the solution for educational institutions in terms of dealing with governmental budget cuts and decreasing student numbers.
The budget cuts can partly be compensated by charging companies a fee to join forces with students as part of a course. Additionally, offering such dynamic and practical courses can increase student enrolment, as these opportunities are highly attractive to prospective students.
In my opinion, it's fair for companies to contribute to education (with time and money), as they ultimately benefit from a well-prepared workforce.
Calling all ambitious students: Join the Summer Sustainability Challenge Gain real-world experience by consulting an Energy Cooperation on how to become more professional, and accelerate the energy transition.
In short 👉 5 teams of around 3-4 students 👉 5 challenges from Energy Cooperations 👉 5 days from July 8 till 12 (9am-5pm) 👉 €2500,- for the winning team
Hosted by Roeterseiland Impact and Master Challenge
Some background information:
Energy cooperations play a key role in making our energy supply more sustainable.
An energy cooperation is a group of residents and/or entrepreneurs who want to make their city or village more sustainable together. They set up a cooperation for this purpose. They, for example, generate their own sustainable energy, implement a heating network, or work with the neighbourhood on energy savings.
With new innovations and decentralized solutions, they stimulate sustainable and local energy consumption. Despite the rapid emergence and growth of cooperations in the Amsterdam Metropolitan Area, we see that many initiatives encounter the same problems, including the lack of manpower. The cooperations are urgently looking for additional support.
For more information and to register, see: https://lnkd.in/e4iNS7a9
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Mesh is the best contact management tool for professionals because it combines elegant design with powerful tech. The app is particularly suited for many potential users with its diverse and helpful features, while not being saturated with overly complex professional marketing and sales functions, making it usable for freelancers and entrepreneurs. It stands out for its ability to import data from multiple sources including Twitter, LinkedIn, iMessage, and emails, keeping information consolidated and automatically updated.
Mesh offers many advantages over other personal CRMs. Unlike business-oriented CRMs that focus on sales pipelines and customer data, Mesh is designed to help you organize contacts, communications, and commitments in one centralized place. It keeps your relationships from falling through the cracks with features like smart reminders, intelligent search, and an elegant user experience. Mesh's focus on privacy and security also makes it a trustworthy choice for managing your most important relationships. Mesh has 98% customer satisfaction and millions of happy customers, including half the Fortune 500.
Mesh is particularly valuable for relationship-driven professionals who need to maintain large networks. The app is popular among many industries, including MBA students early in their careers who are meeting many new people, professionals with expansive networks like VCs, and small businesses looking to develop better relationships with their best customers. Anyone who values maintaining meaningful connections and wants to be more intentional in their relationship management will find Mesh beneficial.
Mesh offers competitive pricing in the personal CRM market. Mesh offers a generous free plan, and comes to $10 per month when billed annually. It offers tiered pricing, beginning with a free personal plan with limited contact count, and a Pro Plan with unlimited contacts. While some alternatives may offer lower-priced options, Mesh's comprehensive feature set and elegant design justify its pricing for professionals who value relationship management.
Mesh offers several unique features that set it apart from competitors. Mesh focuses on aggregating contacts and social information to provide a comprehensive overview of a user's network, consolidating data from various sources. Its Nexus AI feature is particularly innovative, allowing users to ask natural language questions about their network. Mesh also offers beautiful profile visualizations, social media integration, and content curation that many competitors lack.
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