BE-Basic Education program
Frans van Dam
For a transition to a sustainable biobased economy (BBE) where products are based on biorenewable materials, communication with and participation of citizens are of key importance to raise awareness and create an understanding and support for novel forms of industry and changed roles of citizens. The complete utilization of agricultural crops will allow us to transform the carbon from the atmosphere not only into food, but also into feeds, fibers and fuels. In order to realize this, we need to prepare our future work force for jobs in the biobased economy. After a critical evaluation of present education tracks we developed a series of education products and activities with national and international partners.
In 2013, BE-Basic has made an extensive inventory of existing curriculums and courses on BBE for primary, secondary and higher education in the Netherlands. In addition, industry was consulted about their needs for trained personnel. Based on this inventory, in 2014 the BE-Basic educational program started, with a twofold objective:
- to raise awareness; to develop and to embed education and training for identified needs in several levels of the Dutch education domain; and
- to develop and to embed an international (joint) program of tertiary and post-tertiary education.
This program focussed on students from upper secondary education and higher levels, including post graduate and life long learning.
The program developed over 10 joint international advanced courses, a Massive Open Online Course (MOOC) on Industrial Biotechnology, an entrepeneurship program, several outreach activities including a Global Biobased Business Challenge and an extensive Dual Degree PhD program. Most of the education activities were developed in collaboration with Brazil partners (click through to Brazil Office page) and (more recently) with German and Flanders partners of the BiG-C consortium.
