Saskia Leenders

Saskia is study advisor, and part of the MSc MADE education team. Her role is to help students navigate during their MSc MADE journey and to support their well-being. Also, to help optimize the MSc MADE program, from multiple perspectives, in the dynamic living lab environment.

Before working at AMS Institute, Saskia was supporting teachers to design and innovate their education in interaction with and for society at WUR. She was the project leader of the City Deal Knowledge Making (CDKM) project in Wageningen. During this project, she connected courses to the local societal challenges, evaluated the outcomes to optimize education, and organized round table conversations to understand how to make the cooperation work better between WUR, its education, the municipality, and its citizens. What she learned is that to make it work, you need shared values and a shared mission, with people who can think and work outside the settled boundaries.

Throughout the week, Saskia is combining Studyadvice with coaching for Academic consultancy Training (master course WUR) and is involved in initiatives around transdisciplinary education.

The reason she started as study advisor, is because of the living lab approach at AMS Institute and MSc MADE, and to engage more with students who are right in the middle of this journey. Why Amsterdam? Because AMS Institute is an inspiring place, with an engaged community, where there is a lot of space for creativity, innovation, learning and experimenting together. And somehow the city is enabling this.