Minor abroad
If you want to gain experience living abroad or are enormously interested in certain aspects of civil engineering you can't find within the Netherlands (such as tunnel engineering (Austria) or mechanics within ice (Norway)), you might be interested in doing your minor abroad. With a minor abroad, you can follow normal courses at a partner university. Please keep in mind that it might take 6 up to 12 months to complete all necessary preparations for studying abroad.
On this webpage, more information is given on doing a minor abroad. For more information, see the UT website on studying abroad for all kinds of general information and the ET website on studying abroad or the ET Canvas-page 'Studying abroad for ET students' for more specific information. Especially the Canvas-page gives a great overview of all the different aspects of studying abroad and the processes before. You can also find the Minor Abroad Manual chapter by chapter, in an orderly and readable manner, on this Canvas page, describing all the steps along the way.
Please contact the faculty's minor abroad coordinator, Dorien van de Belt (d.vandebelt@utwente.nl, Horst W103), for further questions.
The steps
The preparation for doing your minor abroad has 4 main steps.
- Select a partner university,
- Sign up in Mobility Online,
- Apply for a scholarship, and
- Practical matters such as visa and housing.
Partner universities: The UT has many partner universities all accross the globe. Such a partner university is an educational institute with whom the UT has reached a bilateral agreement, ensuring a high (enough) quality of education. You can find an overview of all partner universities on the UT website. Keep in mind that there are different types of partner universities and not all might be applicable for CE students. In case the partner university doesn't work with EC's and instead with another credit-system, you can find a conversion table on that same webpage.
Mobility Online: All internships at other educational institutes both in the Netherlands and abroad, graduation assignments and courses abroad must be registered in Mobility Online. You can see this as some sort of tracking application the UT uses to know where each UT-student is (if not at the UT) and what he is doing. You can find a manual on Mobility Online here.
Time line
Extremely globally speaking, the process is built up from 6 phases. See the overview to the right. Additionally, see below for a brief explenation of the different phases.
- The pre-application phase (12-8 months in advance) is to orientate what to do and where to go.
- The application phase (8-3 months in advance) is to register in Mobility Online and follow the exchange procedure. Please check the ET-website for deadlines.
- During the preparation to arrival (3-1 months in advance), some practical matters such as transport for the journey, insurances, paperwork and accommodation are still open to address.
- The month prior to departure should solely be meant to pack the bags.
- When you are abroad, you also have some obligations. These mainly have to do with filling in some steps in Mobility Online.
- After returning home, the student might register in for example the buddy system.
Choosing courses
In principle, you can do any course you want at a partner university applicable to CE. However, there are some (logical) restrictions. These are that the courses you want to follow, should not have overlap with other parts of the standard CE curriculum, that you meet the requirements of the course from the partner university and you should make sure you get all the approval-stamps from the UT that you need. Always keep close contact with the minor abroad coordinator and the study advisor on this!
Since each university has its own system of presenting information, it might be difficult to find your options at the partner university and the available courses. This is your own responsibility. You can make use of the country groups that are in the ET Canvas-page, to discuss with fellow students that went to or want to go to your country of choice on such matters.
