Master Honours Programme

The master honours programme is an extracurricular programme for motivated master’s students at the University of Twente. Students can choose between five different tracks, which start at different moments throughout the year. More information about the programme and the application process can be found on the official website of the honours programmes.

Change Leaders

The annual Master Honours programme Change Leaders will be offered in 2022/2023 for the tenth year. This unique programme focuses on developing your knowledge, attitudes and skills related to leadership and change. These insights will enable you to contribute substantially to consultancy or change projects.

You will gain academic knowledge and practical insights into the best change approaches and techniques to achieve improvements. You will learn to recognise different forms of resistance as well as gain knowledge and insights about different change interventions and accompanying processes like learning in teams. As well as this, you will reflect on your own role as a leader and/or during change processes.

Great Negotiators

The Master Honours programme track “Great Negotiators” is a unique programme that aims to develop students’ negotiation and communication skills by executing numerous simulations, exercises, and extensive study of the academic body of knowledge in negotiation and ethical conflict management. This programme is internationally renowned for its excellence in producing graduates who perform exceptionally well in negotiations on top-tier levels in international competition settings, and in real life in both the public and private sectors.

The programme concludes with a student-organised graduation conference, complete with final project presentations and student-run negotiation exhibitions. Examples of final projects can be qualifying for and partaking in an international negotiation competition, entering real-life (business/academic) negotiations, or reporting on the preparation, performance, and execution of the overall negotiation process. In a cross-disciplinary environment, participants will establish the theoretical foundation of negotiation, reflect on the current state of research, acquire the interpersonal skills needed to negotiate and apply this knowledge in a global negotiation challenge. With this approach, a widely applicable and academically founded course can be offered that helps you develop negotiation skills and put your knowledge into practice.

In the programme, you will further develop your theoretical knowledge, attitudes, and skills related to negotiation and communication. You will gain insights into dealing with complex and hostile opposing parties, making substantiated decisions, and building generally applicable negotiation strategies. This programme will provide you with the tools that will enable you to get more of what you want in any aspect of your life.

Research Honours

The Master Research Honours may be just what you are looking for. This individually tailored, extra-curricular track offers you additional knowledge and skills in the areas of research management, research publishment, and (PhD) research proposal development. Through extra courses, training, and meetings, the program supports excellent UT master students that are in their graduation phase to develop knowledge and skills in the area of academic research.

Throughout the programme, students participate in a number of workshops and courses. One goal of these workshops is to improve academic writing style alongside other practicalities. Another goal is to learn more about the structure of science, how it is perceived, and aspects regarding publishing.

Design Honours

The Master Design Honours is a programme that will guide you through a full design process, integrating both technological and societal challenges. These challenges are rooted in the research of various engineering labs at the University of Twente. In this programme, you will work in small design teams. You will develop your skills in mastering complex design problems and creating novel solutions. The Design Honours track challenges you to:

  • Design a product, system, or service and involve relevant stakeholders;

  • Address a societal challenge and cash technological potential;

  • Create a product with your team that would be ready to launch on kick-starter;

  • Bring societal issues, creative ideas, and technological opportunities together in a viable product concept.

4TU.Responsible Sustainability Challenge

This coming year, the University of Twente is hosting the 4TU.Responsible Sustainability Challenge (4TU.RSC) track for the first year! The UT is organising this pilot together with Delft University of Technology and Eindhoven University of Technology, a collaboration taking place this year for the first time!

Within the 4TU.RSC track, you will work together with students from the Technical Universities of Delft and Eindhoven to work on a real-life company case regarding sustainability! After matching with a case, you will work together with your team to investigate and address an issue regarding sustainability at an external organisation. However, while usually the student receives a clear-cut case from an organisation to solve, we ask that you provide an unbiased, professional and academic look into the issue that the organisation provides you with to determine the exact underlying problems you can address. This requires you to be structured, out-of-the-box thinking and able to work together in a multidisciplinary team of students from all three universities. This challenge will let you become familiar with professional working and can help you make a difference both for your personal growth as well as within the organisation you are working with. A true challenge for excellent students!