Student engagement is perceived as an increasingly important but complex phenomenon in medical education. Recently, integrated theoretical frameworks have been introduced to conceptualize student engagement from a psychological, behavioral, and psychosocial perspective. The body of literature underpinning the development of the frameworks is enormous, but there is a relative paucity of reports detailing the use of the frameworks in practice. Here, we present a case study of three de novo student initiatives at the Technical University of Munich. The initiatives cover various topics, from case-based learning tutorials to extracurricular offerings on mental health and mentoring. We will map each project to the integrated framework proposed by Kassab et al. (Med Teach 45:949–965, 2023) and assess its usefulness in capturing student engagement. We conclude that the framework holistically describes the engagement profile of each project but does not consider the different roles students assume when participating in a project or incentivizing it.