Minor Professional Identity

Your professional Identity grows when integrating knowledge learned, skills gained and talents and values that fit your character. In reflection sessions we work in small groups to build on that identity, to gain resilience and to learn to change perspectives to get better view on our own.

Reflective sessions are scheduled throughout the semester and are mandatory! Choices of time is available in advance, however: you have to stay in the same small group during the entire module!!

Suggested time frames could swipe some quarters if wanted and agreed on. The exact dates might for one or two be changed if scheduled exams of other subjects of participants get in the way. All changes are to be discussed with all participants in each group and approved by the lecturer in advance!

Course overview

One of the core elements of one’s identity (personal or professional), are the values one holds dear or sacred and by which one tries to do good. The values might be ethical, humanistic, spiritual, or religious.

This 3EC course explores (a) the value of values in relation to professional identity and good practice and (b) explores how values are communicated and communicate, be it in a virtual or in the real world.

Concerning the latter, the idea is that VR games, art, and architecture, for instance, not only envision (as a representation) certain values but also intend to inspire and even activate the (casual) gamer, onlooker, or dweller. In that sense the representation installs a ‘sacred space’, where values do their work of inspiration and guidance.

The course provides for a step-by-step exploration of this process of representation and communication. This will help students understand how to value values: how they work, how they are communicated and communicate, and how they inspire, strengthen, and guide professional identity. This then will provide students with useful insights in how to value and communicate their values and how to ‘put them to work’ in a professional context.

Assessment

To complete the course, students are asked to create a representation of (professional) values. 

Course Learning Goals

After completion of this course the student is able to:

• describe different values and value sets within our modern society;
• analyze how these values and value sets are communicated implicitly and explicitly through various media and locations;
• create their own critical representation of a personal value in relation to their (prospect) professional workfield(s).

Lecturers

Prof. dr. Monique van Dijk-Groeneboer (TST)

Dr. Frank G. Bosman (TST)

Dr. Arnold Smeets (TST)

Course overview

This 3 ECTS course is aimed at an academic understanding of the topic of Happiness. It is based on the academic field of 'Positive psychology' which has taken flight during the last couple of decades. The field of Positive Psychology focuses on examining how people become more psychologically healthy, instead of looking at psychological problems that can occur. During the lectures, there will be a lot of room to discuss how these academic insights translate into daily life, and to reflect on the topics. 

Assessment

The assignments of the course will ask students to:

• Read and use academic literature in order to write about a topic of your own interest
• Reflect on the theories discussed in the course, and apply them to your daily life

Lecturer

Dr. Ellen Dreezens

Course overview

The “Entrepreneurial Literacy Initiative” (ELI) aims at helping students who have entrepreneurship in the back of their mind decide whether this is a career option that fits their professional and life goals. Students learn some tools and materials to plan an entrepreneurial career rationally: (i) knowledge about facts and concepts to understand the challenges of entrepreneurship, and (ii) skills necessary to manage an entrepreneurial career. The course is fully online and can be taken when convenient, within the blok(s) allocated to the module.
There are four modules, all accessible online from the day mentioned below:
1) Entrepreneurship: key facts and statistics
2) Debunking myths on entrepreneurship
3) Career planning: entrepreneurship vs employment 
4) Assembling resources: finance and teams 
There are no readings but only podcasts and video-lectures to follow. You can email the lecturer (through Canvas email) when needed.

Assessment

After each online module a test (online, multiple choice) is to be passed. All tests together give you the full credit for this part: you need to pass at least three out of the four test to pass this module, which is pass/fail.

Lecturer

Dr. Marco Da Rin

Course overview

The term subversive crime generally refers to organised crime, but also includes corporate and state crime, as well as ‘lawful but awful’ behaviour. Once you start working for public as well as private organisations, you may well be confronted with such problems. The main learning goals of this course are to become aware of risks, how to respond to these from a moral perspective, and how to increase your personal resilience. 

To begin with, you may be confronted with ‘external’ threats from different actors who are not pleased with your, or your employers’ actions. For example, if you work for a municipality which is responsible for issuing operating licenses for certain types of economic activities, refusing such a license may result in physical threats as well as intimidating legal responses. In such cases, resilience involves both internal procedures as well as how to personally cope with such attempts. Second, problems may be caused by ‘internal’ aspects of the organisation you work for. What happens if rule violations occur, or the organisation is facilitating behaviour which can be questioned from a moral perspective. One example could be that you discover that the prestigious law firm you just joined is involved in developing methods of tax avoidance for its clients. The simple answer would of course be to quit the job, if you consider such activities to be morally unacceptable, or to do you homework and not apply with such an organisation in the first place. However, in practice this is, indeed, too simplistic even in today’s favourable job market and other options should be considered. 

The course comprises five tutorials, addressing the following topics:

1. The social construction of concepts of crime, deviance and harm. What is considered legally or morally unacceptable both from societal and personal perspectives?
2. Potential external threats to organisations and their employees and how to deal with these?
3. Potential risks of becoming involved in legally or morally unacceptable actions initiated by the organisation you work for, and how to deal with these.
4. Assessing the potential risks that might confront you given the type of career you aspire to.
5. Systematically charting the options of how to respond to risks in given cases. 

Assessment

• Presentation during tutorial 4 (30%)
• Written paper (70%)

Study materials

• Reading material will be made available on Canvas

Lecturers

Prof. dr. Toine Spapens

Several practitioners will provide insight from their personal experience.

Course overview

This 3 ECTS module is integrated into the 12 ECTS Liberal Arts & Sciences course “Learning Project: Values and Civil Society” in which students of the LAS program become acquainted with doing (quantitative) social science research. The aim of this module on ‘Values in Europe’ is to make students acquainted with theoretical mechanisms and recent empirical research findings in the field of values change across Europe. In addition to a review of the theory of the Silent Revolution, the course will zoom in on six domains that also constitute the Atlas of European Values (Halman et al., 2022). These six domains are Identity, Welfare, Migration, Sustainability, Solidarity, and Democracy. 

Assessment

To complete this module, students need to write a literature review (approx. 2,000 words (+/- 10%) without references) on a topic relevant to the course.

Lecturer 

Dr. Tim Reeskens