Wan Bakx

Wan Bakx is Lecturer at the department of Earth Observation Science, portfolio holder Education in the Management Team, and Course Director Geoinformatics as well as Course Coordinator for the Geoinformatics Master of Science course. 

After having studied a short course on Digital Image Processing in 1986 I joined the ITC in late 1987 as Data Analyst. Until 1991 I continued working in the former Image Processing Laboratory (IPL) where a strong foundation of the physics behind Remote Sensing was established and transferred in short courses. This mostly theoretical knowledge came in handy when I travlled aborad to the Middle-East where I had to implement the knoqwledge in real life situations. From 1993 I gradually became more and more involved in the educational processes at ITC. A temporary position as Lecturer in Thematic Maps was succeeded by an assignment as Director of Studies of the Geoinformatics (GFM) MSc course and later as one of the first Programme Directors at ITC. A major achievement was the restructuring of the GFM programme into a modular structure, a structure which was successfully copied to all other programmes at ITC. By that time (1999) the successor of the IPL was established and I took the challenge to be the head of the Geo Technical Support Unit. Being a Unit within the IT Department, this resulted in increased knowledge and expertise on the more generic IT fields together with building competence in project management (PRINCE 2) and management. In this management position, the contact with students and the possibility to follow developments in the educational and the technological and application domain was however limited. When a prospective job opening of a lecturer in the Earth Observation Science Department was posted, I did not need much time to decide. Since April 2006 I am therefore right at the heart of teaching and learning and now have the responsibility to manage all educational efforts by the Earth Observation Science Department and since 2013 assigned Course Director of the Geoinformatics course domain and course coordinator of the MSc programme in GFM. Given the new embedded structure of ITC as faculty in the University of Twente and the accelerating changes in international education, this is once again a challenging responsibility. To stay tuned with the courses and students I am actively involved in education coordinating the Core Module on Earth Observation, the Diploma course Specialisation Remote Sensing and Digital Image Processing and the Distance Course Earth Observation.

If you are interested into what I do when I am not at work, please consult my personal webpage (http://www.wanbakx.nl) to find out that I do have other commitments next to my duties at ITC; I compete in track & field Athletics on international Master level. Not to be confused with Master Degree level, by the way.

Activities in education

• Specialisation Coordinator Geoinformatics MSc
• Educational Portfolio Manager EOS Department 
• Module Coordinator Core Module on Earth Observation MSc
• Lecturer MSc, Professional Master and Diploma courses
• Coordinator & Lecturer short courses

Activities in capacity development

These activities focus on educational projects like special short courses on DIP of RS, for example, the Cyprus Validation Course at ITC and the Digital Image Processing and Spatial Information Extraction for Geoinformation Production course in Nigeria.
I was involved in the preliminary design (and development) of an online course for FAO on Spatial Data Management.