Tutors

The better your tutor knows you, what you are good at, what you enjoy, and what you want to achieve, the better s/he can advise and guide you. Invest in your relationship with your tutor by being open about who you are and who you want to become. Prepare for your tutor meetings. Engage actively in discussion with your tutor, and respond honestly to suggestions that your tutor may make. Your tutor’s guidance is only as good as the information you provide.

Your tutor is the gatekeeper for your individual curriculum, so you are required to meet with your tutor before you can apply for exchange, minors, off-campus courses, or exceptions to programme requirements. Structural mandatory mid-term meetings are scheduled in the weeks after mid-term break. These allow for reflection on your academic progress so far, your plans and how the courses on offer in the consecutive semester(s) will best contribute to your curriculum. During an additional development reflection meeting, you and your tutor will evaluate your development so far and your future ambitions. Forms to prepare for these structural meetings are available at Student Portfolio.Your tutor may also require you to come in on other occasions depending on the situation. You can request additional meetings with your tutor throughout the semester as desired.

During the semester, tutors hold weekly office hours in proportion to the number of students in their tutorial charge (typically between 33 and 44 students). Tutors are also available by appointment and by e-mail at other times during the work week, but there is no such thing as a full-time tutor. Since tutors are scholars, they combine tutorial work with other academic and professional activities at University College Utrecht or elsewhere.

Find your tutor's current office hours and contact information on her or his profile page. Tutors hold more limited office hours during the summer term, and may not be available at all during mid-term breaks and winter and summer vacation. Be sure to keep your tutor’s availability in mind when making plans that could benefit from your tutor’s input.

No: during the mid-term meeting your tutor discusses your course choices for the next semester with you and puts your requests to the registration committee who will take into account all the course requests and who will consider you for placement accordingly. The registration committee (comparable to the ‘plaatsingscommissie’ of other Utrecht University programs) grants places to students on the basis of class size and priority categories (see course registration and placement). Your tutor also discusses alternative courses with you in case you cannot take one of your preferred courses (for example, if its schedule conflicts with another course, if you do not qualify for it, or if class size limits or priority considerations prevent placement in it). If you cannot take a preferred course in a particular semester, your tutor helps you revise your curriculum plan so that you can still meet your personal goals and University College Utrecht graduation requirements on time. After consulting your tutor, you are responsible for any subsequent course change requests, to be submitted through an online waiting list.

You do not need additional guidance about specific disciplinary choices at University College Utrecht: these have already been mapped out for you by department heads, fellows and track coordinators. What you need is help in defining and consolidating your goals, and in identifying which options and opportunities, in the classroom and beyond it, are in line with those. Disciplinary advisors focus on promoting their specific disciplines, while your tutor focuses on you, and your personal path through University College Utrecht's Liberal Arts and Sciences programme. Your tutor’s guidance takes your individual goals and situation into account, helping you fill your curriculum in ways that complement your disciplinary interests.

If at all possible, yes. Continuity allows for you and your tutor to both keep working on your tutoring relationship from semester to semester – something we greatly value at University College Utrecht. It also allows you both to invest in learning about you and your strengths and interests, and to help you reflect on your progress over the years. Hence, we try to maintain continuity in tutorial care. Sometimes, though, individual circumstances do make transfer to a new tutor necessary; in such cases, the senior tutor for student academic affairs facilitates any necessary changes, taking into account individual circumstances whenever possible.

The senior tutor for student academic affairs, University College Utrecht's head tutor, and the student life officer are all available to help students with matters that they would rather not discuss with their own tutor.