Personal Experience - Sterre

Sterre van den Heuvel, student of Cultural Anthropology, participates in the Social Sciences Honours Programme. “I am very interested in human behaviour: why people make certain choices.”

“In the second semester of the programme, we started working in groups on themes such as ‘Sports and Exercise’ and ‘Gender and Identity’. Although this first theme was not in my area of interest, in the end I really liked the course. My Bachelor's programme was mainly theoretical, but during this course I was able to put my ideas into practice. Together with a group of students, we came up with a concept for an app that encourages children to exercise more. We did a lot of practical work and were finally able to present our idea to the municipality.”

Sterre also started her own project, in which she focuses on the climate problems of Nijmegen. “I am very interested in climate change, which I am going to specialize in during the last year of my bachelor’s programme. Outside my studies, this has always been a topic I have worked on a lot as well. That is why, for my project, I want to raise awareness of Nijmegen's climate problems and show how we can address them.” During the Sports and Exercise course Sterre discovered that she really enjoyed developing an app and decided to register for several programming courses in Amsterdam. She also developed her own text-based adventure game during these courses. “In my project I wanted to combine an old passion with a new one, so I came up with the idea of making a similar game, this time applied to the climate in Nijmegen. My objective is to reach people who care about greenery in the city and to show them in a playful way how they can contribute to it. In the coming months I will be discussing this with other parties such as Staatsbosbeheer and the municipality.”

The Social Sciences Honours Programme offered Sterre the opportunity to expand her knowledge and at the same time broaden her horizons. “During the honours programme you get a lot of opportunities to be creative and discover new things. As a result, I also started to develop my own interests in my degree programme. During the programme I also had a lot of discussions with students from other programmes, which also made me interested in other social sciences, such as communication science.”