Wittenborg Students

In May, he deferred his studies because there were no flights from Indonesia to the Netherlands. Now, international student Michael Juan (20) has finally made it to the land of bicycles, tulips and clogs. The ups and downs of his journey towards being a student at Wittenborg University of Applied Sciences was shared this weekend in an article by Dutch daily De Stentor. The paper was curious about how he plucked up the courage to study abroad despite the lingering presence of COVID-19 around the world.

Summer has been great these past couple of weeks in the Netherlands. We checked-in with several students from various places in the country on what they have been doing during the sunny days. Here are their updates.

With the travel ban having been lifted by the Dutch government on 15th June, a few students and staff of Wittenborg have since left their homelands and returned to the Netherlands. Wittenborg News caught up with a staff member and a student to find out more about their experiences and perspectives of the COVID-19 situation.

Most students at Wittenborg University of Applied Sciences are confident that they will achieve their study goals and sufficient credits to proceed to the next academic year, despite the inconveniences caused by COVID-19, a survey has revealed. Wittenborg also received high praise from most students for its swift response to the pandemic and the measures put in place in March to ensure that the education programme for the remainder of the academic year was not disrupted. Just over 96% felt they were adequately informed by Wittenborg about how COVID-19 will affect the study programme.

Wittenborg University of Applied Sciences organises numerous activities and events for its students, staff and faculty members consistently throughout the academic year. When it comes to events management, there is a lot to prepare and sometimes it's easy to overlook what pressure goes on behind the scenes. There are weeks or sometimes months of planning to be able to deliver a successful event. The preparation part takes a lot of dedication and patience. A lot of events that Wittenborg has delivered to its stakeholders have been supported by students relentlessly devoting their time as event volunteers during the whole process. Today, we hear from some of these wonderful students about the motivation behind their contribution to Wittenborg events and activities.

Amidst the warm summer afternoon, four young adults, three of whom are from Wittenborg, prepared for a workout session with refugees at the spacious backyard of the former UMW building at Christiaan Geurtsweg in Apeldoorn.

Restaurants, terraces, museums and cinemas in the Netherlands were allowed to open again this week after more than two months of closure due to the COVID-19 outbreak. Public transport is now also running to normal schedules again after services were significantly reduced. A day later, Wittenborg University of Applied Sciences also reopened all its locations in the Netherlands – its two buildings in Apeldoorn and one in Amsterdam are now all accessible again during office hours.

Part of the world's social and economic life is gathering momentum as the COVID-19 pandemic wanes. For Oluwaseun Victor Ogunremi, his hope for a better tomorrow may just be around the corner.

As Wuhan, the first city where coronavirus COVID-19 was detected, went into lockdown at the end of January, it trapped millions of people inside its borders - including Wittenborg final-year student Xi Yang, who was now forced to complete the final part of her studies in quarantine. This week, her lonely struggle in these dire circumstances came to a happy ending as she graduated after presenting her final assignment to a panel of lecturers online!