Our Mission

VTK Education advocates for students in various councils and bodies of our faculty. At the university level, we discuss broader themes in Stura and LOKO. At the faculty level, we have a seat in the Faculty POC and the Faculty Council, among others. Furthermore, we strive to support all our RiVers well, so that every program is represented. Do you have questions, education-related issues, or are you eager to become a representative yourself? Contact us!

Student Representation

Student representation is of crucial importance. It ensures that KU Leuven takes the vision of its students into account, so that education is tailored to the student as optimally as possible. Student representatives are active across all levels of KU Leuven and represent not just their own opinions, but those of their fellow students. But what are all these levels, and what does VTK mean in this context? More importantly: what role can you play in this story? To answer all these questions, we take a broad look at the representative bodies at our faculty and at KU Leuven. Here is a broad overview. <br>

POC

The POC (Permanent Educational Committee) is a committee consisting of professors, PhD students, ombudspersons, and students from a specific program, and is chaired by the program director. All 21 programs offered by the Faculty of Engineering Science are each shaped by a POC. These POCs determine the substantive aspects of their specific programs and are often the most engaging meetings for student representatives. The students who hold a seat in a POC are called Program Representatives, abbreviated as RiVers.

Any student can become a RiVer and join the POC of their program! For this purpose, VTK organizes elections at the beginning of the academic year, where fellow students from your program can elect you to represent their voice in the POC. On average, a POC meets 6 times a year, often during lunch. As a RiVer, you are never alone and can always count on the support of VTK Education, the education team within VTK!

Faculty POC

Sometimes there are problems or pain points in certain programs, where the POCs of those programs will look for possible solutions. When issues or discussions arise that affect a large portion of engineering students, they are brought to the FPOC, which is the overarching POC for our faculty. The FPOC is chaired by the Vice Dean for Education of our faculty (Prof. Mattias Schevenels) and brings together all program directors. The student voice on the FPOC is represented by VTK, including VTK Education and the president (praeses).

Departmental Board

At the head of each department in our faculty is a departmental board, chaired by the department chair, which also brings together all section heads of a department. This meeting primarily discusses administrative and research-related matters (section budgets, hiring and dismissal of researchers, departmental renovations...). Any student can run as a candidate to become a student representative on the departmental board for their department. This election runs in parallel with the POC elections organized by VTK!

Faculty Board

The Faculty Board is responsible for the daily operations of the faculty. It is chaired by the Dean (Prof. Jos Vander Sloten), who is assisted by his 2 Vice Deans: the Vice Dean for Education (Prof. Mattias Schevenels), who will often present the advice of the FPOC when the educational policy of the faculty is discussed, and the Vice Dean for Internationalization (Prof. Ilse Smets), who is responsible for the international policy of our faculty. The Faculty Board brings together all department chairs of all 7 departments of our faculty. In the Faculty Board, the student voice is represented by the president (praeses) of VTK and the group coordinator of Education.

The Faculty Council elects the dean's team every four years and also ratifies the decisions of the Faculty Board. In a year without dean elections, the Faculty Council rarely meets. The decisions of the Faculty Board are then approved "tacitly".

Group Executive Committee - SET Group

All 16 faculties of KU Leuven are divided into 3 groups: the Science, Engineering and Technology (SET) Group, the Humanities and Social Sciences Group, and the Biomedical Sciences Group. Each of these groups has a group executive committee and is chaired by a Vice Rector.

Our Dean, together with the 4 other deans (who are part of the SET Group), sits on the group executive committee of the SET Group. This committee is chaired by the Vice Rector of the SET Group. In the group executive committee, the student voice is represented by a representative of the KU Leuven Student Council (abbreviated as 'Stura'). How this representative is elected is explained further below.

Executive Board

The GeBu (Executive Board) is the highest executive body of KU Leuven, consisting of all Vice Rectors of KU Leuven, and is chaired by the Rector, Severine Vermeire. The chair of the Student Council represents the student voice here.

The Executive Board prepares the strategic visions and policy decisions concerning academic education, scientific research, and societal and scientific services, submits them for approval to the Academic Council, and is subsequently responsible for their implementation. It is thus a kind of daily management board for KU Leuven, with the Academic Council functioning more like a parliament.

Academic Council

The Academic Council consists of all the deans of all faculties in addition to the members of the GeBu, and it makes the policy decisions to implement the university's strategy. It evaluates the functioning of the Executive Board in light of the execution of that strategy. The Academic Council also oversees university-wide quality control of academic education and scientific research. Four students hold a seat on this council: the vice-chair of the Student Council, along with the 3 Stura representatives who each sit on one of the 3 group executive committees.

Board of Governors

The Board of Governors (RvB) primarily guards the financial balance of KU Leuven. It oversees the effective and efficient operation of internal quality control, risk management, and control systems. The Board of Governors establishes, among other things, the budget and the available cash flows. It is then up to the Academic Council to decide how these are utilized to fulfill KU Leuven's mission regarding education and research policy. Once that decision has been made, it is up to the GeBu to implement it.

The Board of Governors is chaired by Marianne Thyssen and also includes the Rector, the 3 Vice Rectors for each of the 3 groups, and primarily external directors (non-staff members of KU Leuven). The student voice here is brought by the chair and vice-chair of the Student Council.

KU Leuven Student Council

In the policy bodies at the university level, student representation is mainly carried out by representatives of the Student Council. How are they elected?

This happens during a General Assembly (GA) of Stura. The Stura GA is made up of 16 “faculty consultative bodies”, or “FOs” for short. These are the student representatives from each of the 16 faculties. VTK forms the FO for the Faculty of Engineering Science and thus has a voice at the biweekly Stura GAs. The Stura representatives (chair, vice-chair, group board members...) are all elected by all 16 FOs for a one-year mandate. During these biweekly GAs, they account to the GA and provide updates on policy at the university level. Often, input is also requested from all FOs during such a GA. It is intended that each FO represents the opinion of the students of its faculty. How does VTK gather the collective opinion of all engineering students? Through the VTK Bureau!

VTK Bureau

The VTK Bureau is a meeting organized biweekly on Wednesday afternoons to provide updates and ask for input on policy decisions at the faculty level (FPOC, Faculty Board) and university level (Group Executive Committee, GeBu...). VTK will directly represent the input for the faculty level, while the input for the university level will be voiced during a Stura GA, where the Stura representatives will hear the input from 16 FOs. They will then further voice this student perspective in the policy bodies at the university level.

Every student at our faculty is welcome to provide input during a VTK Bureau! The presence of RiVers at the VTK Bureau is also quite important, as they act as a mouthpiece for their fellow students in their program. This way, they can raise issues or provide input based on the experiences of their fellow students. The more students present at a VTK Bureau, the better VTK can represent that voice! Do you want to help determine how education will be shaped in the coming years? Then the VTK Bureau is your place to be!