Professional Identity Education

Course goals

At the end of this course, you will be able to: 

• Formulate your professional identity (who you are, what you can bring, what do you want) to market yourself effectively;  
• Describe your (personal and professional) goals and preferences, often related to your strengths and weaknesses, through effective reflection; 
• Demonstrate effective collaboration with others in a professional setting; 
• Demonstrate effective communication about your expectations, needs and boundaries in a professional setting; 
• Evaluate your own vitality and stress levels to work towards becoming a resilient professional. 

Content

Period (from – till): 16 November 2026 – 20 March 2028 (BMS_P2_A).The course extends over the two years of the Master’s programme. You can follow this course if you go abroad in the second year of your programme
 
Faculty
Course coordinator: Kirsten Koymans, PhD (K.J.Koymans@umcutrecht.nl)
Additional faculty: Kirsten Boersma-van Nierop MSc, Tania Moran Luengo, PhD, Michèle Molendijk, PhD.
 
Course description
This course focuses on finding your own professional identity (Who am I? What do I want? What can I bring?). Knowing yourself enables you to make the most out of your study time and to prepare yourself for future career opportunities.  For this, you will learn to look inward and self-reflect on who you are as a person and a professional, using tools from the field of (positive) psychology. Furthermore, each PIE session consists of a Social, Skills, and Support element.
To help you make the most of your potential, you will learn and practice professional communication skills (collaboration, active listening, influencing, dealing with feedback) with peers, stakeholders, and supervisors. Learning together with peers enhances learning results, so a Social-element is present in each PIE session. You will also gain time management skills and improve important competences for setting and revising personal goals. This is an example of the Skills element. Furthermore, you will gain knowledge, skills and attitudes to improve your wellbeing, resilience to stress and communicating about personal expectations, needs and boundaries. Throughout the course, you and your fellow students will also be creating a social support system to help each other in different ways. This is the Support-element in each PIE session. Through this emphasis on social support and wellbeing, you benefit both during your studies and in your personal life.
  
Practical information 
The course extends over the two years of the Master’s programme, which is unique (year 1: Nov-May, year 2: Sept-April). By using periodically scheduled sessions divided over two years (8 in the first year, 7 in the second year), you are continuously supported by peers and staff to boost your progress and wellbeing. Together, we focus on how you are doing and use different tools for dealing with both individual and mutual challenges that commonly arise during the Master's programme. Meetings will take place on Monday in an interactive and workshop-like fashion. In between meetings, you will prepare for the sessions, do exercises and reflect on experiences, either individually or together with peers. We understand at this point that you may not know whether you will be going abroad in your second Master year: this is not a problem as you will be able to continue this course online while abroad.

Course dates:
16-11-2026
14-12-2026
11-01-2027
01-02-2027
01-03-2027
22-03-2027
19-04-2027
24-05-2027
13-09-2027
11-10-2027
08-11-2027
13-12-2027
10-01-2028
07-02-2028
13-03-2028
20-03-2028

Assessment 
The preparatory and reflection assignments during the course help you build a journal that shows you are skilled at self-reflection and have achieved the learning objectives. After the first year, you deliver a preliminary version of the journal for feedback and after the second year, you hand in the complete journal. A final presentation on your personal growth during the course and active participation during the sessions are also part of the assessment. All components (journal+presentation+active participation) need to be assessed with a Pass in order to complete the course and obtain credits. For the active participation: most sessions will be taught face-to-face, except for the last few sessions of the second year, which will be hybrid. You can be absent for two sessions in the first year, and two in the second year, and replacement assignments will be in place for those cases. 

Registration:
You can register for this course via Osiris Student. More information about the registration procedure can be found here on the Students' site.

Mandatory for students in own Master’s programme:
N.A.
 
Optional for students in other GSLS Master’s programme:
Yes, for all GSLS students.