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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 12pt; color: rgb(33, 33, 33);">Dear colleagues, </span></p>
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 12pt; color: rgb(33, 33, 33);">We are proud to run the top-ranked program in the country, and we are committed to preserving both its high academic standards and its positive atmosphere. At the
same time, we are facing some important challenges. We need to continue to address the financial losses we are currently experiencing and prepare for a likely decline in student numbers due to demographic changes.</span></p>
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 12pt; color: rgb(33, 33, 33);">Last year, I outlined a stepwise approach to reducing the program’s costs, and together we took an important first step. Now it is time to continue building on that
progress. With this email, I would like to share the student TA hiring policy for the coming year.</span></p>
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 12pt; color: rgb(33, 33, 33);">There is a great deal at stake, and we fully recognize that these are not easy steps. We sincerely appreciate your understanding and cooperation as we move forward
together in implementing these measures. Thank you for your continued efforts and commitment.</span></p>
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 12pt; color: rgb(33, 33, 33);"><b>Tutorials and TA deployment</b></span></p>
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 12pt; color: rgb(33, 33, 33);"><b>1.Group size = 25-30
</b> Last year, we increased tutorial group sizes to around 25 students, and in most cases this has worked well. At the same time, we still see instances where groups become quite small—sometimes even dropping below 10 students, particularly after the initial
decline in attendance. Unfortunately, this is not something we can sustain<b>. Our aim is for tutorial groups to have approximately 25–30 students present</b>, and we ask course coordinators to help maintain this throughout the course.</span></p>
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 12pt; color: rgb(33, 33, 33);">It is also important to keep in mind that a significant fraction of registered students do not attend, and that attendance often drops after the first one or two weeks.
We are happy to support you in estimating expected group size. Please feel free to reach out to me and Joris Peters for this.</span></p>
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 12pt; color: rgb(33, 33, 33);">One practical approach is to plan for an additional group in the first one or two weeks, which can be run by staff or PhD students, and then consolidate groups as
attendance stabilizes. Where needed, small groups can be merged, and any unused room reservations can be cancelled. If this leads to PhD TAs becoming available, we would greatly appreciate it if you could let us know as soon as possible so they can be deployed
where they are most needed.</span></p>
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 12pt; color: rgb(33, 33, 33);"><b>2.Tutorials are predominantly run by staff or PhD students
</b>–<b> </b>Last year, we were able to reduce the number of student TA hours by 35%. Thank you for your efforts in making this possible. To continue this progress, we will need to further refine and sharpen our TA deployment policy.</span></p>
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 12pt; color: rgb(33, 33, 33);"><b>In the academic year 26’/27’ we will implement the following policy:</b></span></p>
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 12pt; color: rgb(33, 33, 33);">-<b>Third-year</b> classes are no longer allowed to hire student TAs. </span></p>
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 12pt; color: rgb(33, 33, 33);">-<b>Second-year</b> classes are expected to run at least 60% of their tutorials by staff or PhD students. </span></p>
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 12pt; color: rgb(33, 33, 33);">-<b>First year</b> classes should aim to run at least 30% of their tutorials by staff or PhD students.</span></p>
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 12pt; color: rgb(33, 33, 33);">-<b>Honor’s courses</b> cannot hire student TAs.</span></p>
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 12pt; color: rgb(33, 33, 33);">-The Tutoraat, KMSRT, PVLO, Practical’s (all years) and “Reflectie op Natuurkunde” may hire more student TAs as an exception, as it is challenging to staff your tutorials
with Dutch speaking PhDs with the necessary expertise and background. But, we still do ask you kindly to try to use PhDs and staff members as much as possible. </span></p>
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 12pt; color: rgb(33, 33, 33);">If you hire student TAs, please critically consider how many hours you employ them for. I will be in touch with relevant course coordinators with new guidelines on
student TA hours, as we are using more hours per course EC for student TAs than other programs. Of course, their workload may have to be adjusted accordingly.</span></p>
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 12pt; color: rgb(33, 33, 33);">Also, please help to further streamline the system to deploy available PhD students within your institute and enable PhD students to also TA in courses coordinated
from staff from other institutes. In practice, we see that it is not sufficient to only depend on the availability of PhD students in your own institute.
<b>We have also seen very positive results with staff members who run tutorials and we need to increase these efforts</b>. It’s a great opportunity to interact more directly with our students.</span></p>
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 12pt; color: rgb(33, 33, 33);"><b>3.Tutorials should be active and interactive –
</b>Tutorial’s become much more valuable when students are stimulated to actively participate and to interact. Please encourage the people in charge of your tutorials to use active learning methods (think of blended learning, flipped classroom, quizzes, group
assignments etc). I understand this is extra challenging with a bigger group. Tutorials where students are passively doing homework with a TA that is available for questions has limited added value. We will devote time to this topic in the teacher’s meeting
on May 19.</span></p>
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 12pt; color: rgb(33, 33, 33);"><b> </b></span></p>
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 12pt; color: rgb(33, 33, 33);"><b>4. No external’s -</b> We cannot hire external people. </span></p>
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 12pt; color: rgb(33, 33, 33);"><b>5. Room reservations
</b>- Book rooms that match the size of the group of actively participating students. If you no longer need a room, cancel the reservation.</span></p>
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 12pt; color: rgb(0, 0, 0);">I realize that these new guidelines may place additional demands on our staff and PhD students. The teaching coordination team will do its utmost to keep everything running
smoothly and to preserve the high standards and positive teaching atmosphere of our program. We truly appreciate your commitment and the effort you put into making this work.</span></p>
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 12pt; color: rgb(33, 33, 33);">Best wishes,</span></p>
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 12pt; color: rgb(33, 33, 33);">Chase</span></p>
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 12pt; color: rgb(0, 0, 0);"> </span></p>
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<span style="font-size: 13.5pt;">Prof. dr. Chase Broedersz </span><span style="font-size: 11pt;"><br>
</span><span style="font-size: 13.5pt; color: rgb(12, 100, 192);"><i>University Research Chair Professor </i></span></div>
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Theoretical Physics of Life</div>
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Program Director Physics and Astronomy BSc JD</div>
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VU Amsterdam - Research building 4B-145</div>
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<span style="color: rgb(5, 99, 193);"><b><u><a href="http://broederszgroup.com/" title="http://broederszgroup.com/" data-outlook-id="6b549735-8a34-471b-837c-4e65a337bfc3" style="color: rgb(5, 99, 193);">Group website</a></u></b></span><span style="color: blue;"><b><u><a href="http://broederszgroup.com/" title="http://broederszgroup.com/" data-outlook-id="fa8bcd15-9d0f-4f35-9221-377417db3085" style="color: blue;"> </a></u></b></span></div>
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