On Tuesday 18 February 2025, Jan Haarhuis will bid farewell to Utrecht University as part of his retirement. During his career at UU, Jan has held several positions where his main focus was on educational innovation and renewal.

After working as Head of Education and Student Affairs at DGK for several years, Jan set up and further developed the education innovation programme Educate-it in 2014. The Educate-it programme has served as an example for many (inter)national educational institutions and is now included in the CAT. For his innovative ideas and work, Jan Haarhuis received the first SURF ‘Change Maker’ Education Award in 2016. Jan has been chair of LERU’s Digital Higher Education policy group for 10 years, was a member of the EWUU alliance’s education steering committee for 4 years, and has made a major contribution to the development and co-founding of the European University CHARM-EU from 2019.

To mark his farewell, a symposium:‘ Shaping the Future of Higher Education’ will be organised on 18 February 2025 from 10:00 to 18:00 o’clock. The symposium will take place at UU’s new Playground.

During this special day, we will engage with inspiring speakers who will share their insights on developments in higher education from various perspectives. We will also look ahead to the future of education. There will also be ample opportunity on this day to thank Jan personally and reflect on shared memories.

Extra seats for symposium

Besides relations of Jan who have received a personal invitation to this symposium, a limited (15) number of open places have been made available.

You can register for these via this link.

Open access drinks reception (after registration)

During the drinks from 16.00 to 18.00, there will be an opportunity to say hello to Jan in person. Even if you are not participating in the symposium, you are welcome to come to the drink. To do so, please register via cat@uu.nl with ref: farewell drink Jan Haarhuis.

Programme Symposium

Bert van der Zwaan, former rector of Utrecht University, will open the symposium with a keynote entitled ‘The coming great transformation’. This will be followed by an interactive panel discussion on educational innovation, highlighted from four different perspectives by Eveline Renders (EUNIS/SURF), Niels Bovenschen (UMC Utrecht), Meritxell Chaves (CHARM-EU/ FOREU4ALL/University of Barcelona) and Sebastiaan Steenman (Utrecht University).

In a live interview with Jan Haarhuis, you will learn more about Jan and his career at UU. During lunch, there will be the opportunity to learn about various educational innovation tools on display at the information market.

The afternoon programme is dedicated to break-out sessions on technology, trans-disciplinary education and research, European university alliances and ‘Centers for Teaching and Learning’.

The morning programme can also be followed online via this link.

The full symposium programme can be downloaded here.