Starting August 18, about two and a half thousand first-years will get to know TU/e under the wings of their Intro mentors. That number isn’t final yet, because prospective first-years can register for the Intro right until the last day.

In the Industria boardroom, treasurer Jasmijn van Heck is busy preparing for the Intro Week. “The program, which includes the tent party and campus market, is almost complete. One of the final sticking points is finding enough parents. The deadline is Friday and we’re now texting everyone we know.”

Fourth-year student Van Heck supervises Industria’s Intro committee and is an experienced Intro participant. “We’re expecting up to four hundred participants (for Industrial Engineering). Because we don’t want the groups to be too big – fifteen participants per group is really the max – we need more mentors.”

Van Heck herself considers the Intro Week “the greatest week of my life”. She would recommend becoming a mentor to anyone. “You get to go everywhere, you can visit all the parties, you can build a great connection with your mentees, and you do something important for beginning students.” She herself has fond memories of her mentors. “I can still call them for just about anything.”

Pattern

Thijmen Worm is a treasurer at the umbrella of study associations (FSE) and coordinator of the Intro Week at FSE member associations. “I’m not quite sure, but I suspect Pattern, the Data Science association, is also short of Intro mentors. This isn’t the case for Simon Stevin (Mechanical Engineering) and Protagoras (Biomedical Technology). At least, that’s what I was told in the most recent meeting on June 10.”

Most things are going well, according to Worm. “The shirts, day program, and dinner aren’t causing any problems as far as we know. Food is one of our focus points; we’ve decided to give the study associations more autonomy in that area rather than arranging it very centrally.”

When it comes to the shortage of Intro mentors, Worm has no m solution. “It’s too bad that not enough Intro mentors have signed up by now. The deadline has already been postponed once, we won’t do that again. Hopefully, it will still work out.”

Van Heck and fellow Industria students are doing their utmost. “If it doesn’t work out, the Intro groups will just have to be a little bigger.” She quickly makes one last appeal: “People can register on our site until Friday.”