UM Magazine June 2011

magazine 02/June 2011

About education and research at Maastricht University

“We shouldn’t aim to be

a Harvard on the Meuse”

Martin Paul, new President of the Executive Board - pag 10

Eat proteins

weight to lose

Results of DIOGenes, the European diet study - pag 4

How harmful is the

bonus culture?

Psychologist Fred Zijlstra in debate with economist Thomas Dohmen on rewarding and the tight labour market - pag 22

Content

Further 04 European diet study - Marleen van Baak: Eat proteins to lose weight 10 Portrait - Martin Paul, new President of the Executive Board: “Be who you are”

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Henriëtte Maassen van den Brink

is one of the leading Dutch academics in the field of evidence based education. In 2009 and 2010, she was proclaimed ‘Most powerful woman in the Netherlands in the field of Education and Science’ by Dutch magazine ‘Opzij’

12 Professor-student - Rob Bauer and Daniël Hann 14 Passionate professor - The constitution never ceases to fascinate Monica Claes 16 Euregional collaboration - Leo Koole sets the bar high in BioMiMedics 18 Sustainability - Annemarie van Zeijl-Rozema: The barriers to sustainable development in Limburg 20 Problem-Based Learning abroad - Paving the way to student-centred education in Mozambique 22 Debate - Thomas Dohmen and Fred Zijlstra on rewarding and the tight labour market 24 Culture - Maaike Meijer writes biography of the poet M. Vasalis 28 Cross-cultural intelligence - Noi Nantawan Kwanjai: Doing business in a globalised world

32 Alumna Kirsten Guyaux

leaves Neelie Kroes for Bernard Wientjes. She studied economics, was the former personal assistant of Neelie Kroes and is now working at VNO-NCW in Brussels.

30 Off the job - Blind vertrouwen (‘Blind Trust’): an autobiography

by Esther Crombag 34 Alumni - Farewell interview with Ine Kuppen and Jeroen van den Biggelaar 36 University Fund - Ans Samama-Polak: A named foundation alive with music - Maastricht Unversity Dinner News 9, 19, 26, 27 and 38

Excellent education and cross-border collaboration Maastricht University (UM) has yet more reason to be proud. In the Keuzegids Hoger Onderwijs (the Dutch guide to higher education), UM has taken out first place for the quality of its master’s programmes.

I quote: “For anyone acquainted with the university rankings, this will be familiar. Yet it is also surprising.

Because while Maastricht’s bachelor’s programmes have long scored well, many experts have seen UM merely as a sort of apprentice university that would never be able to achieve high-level master’s programmes. But as it turns out, it is precisely among the independent experts who have to approve all master’s programmes that Maastricht is number 1!”

institutions in the Netherlands but also in Belgium (Hasselt) and Germany (RWTH Aachen), we are working to further improve our anchoring in the Euregion.

These are large, cross-border projects, reflecting our conviction that international and interdisciplinary collaboration is the path we must take in the 21st century.

And to be sure, in its 35 years of existence Maastricht University has proven itself more than able to meet such challenges!

Professor Gerard Mols, Rector Magnificus, Maastricht University

Here, thanks to our combined efforts, we have shown that we also hold our own when it comes to master’s education and the academic research inextricably linked with it. I give full credit to our staff, and I challenge them all to ensure that we continue to deliver the same top quality in the coming years.

Meanwhile, we are continuing to create links with the business sector. UM is one of several knowledge institutions involved in the Brainport 2020 plan.

As such, we are forging close ties with the government, know-ledge institutions and business sector in an effort to foster knowledge generation, innovation, economic activity and employment in a structural and effective manner. To this end we are participating in the development of the Chemelot Campus in Geleen/Sittard, the Health Campus in Maastricht and the Greenport Campus in Venlo, as well as other initiatives. In this way, together with our sister

Gerard Mols

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European diet study

Eat proteins to lose weight

by Loek Kusiak

Extremely overweight? According to DiOGenes, a European study in which Maastricht University (UM) took part, protein-rich foods like lean meat and wholegrain bread may be the solution. So is the search now over for the holy grail of weight loss? “No, but when obese people lose weight it will help them to maintain their new weight”, says Marleen van Baak, endowed professor of Physiology of Obesity and DiOGenes project leader for Maastricht.

Overweight is on the increase. At present, almost half of the Dutch population is overweight and 13% suffer from obesity (extreme overweight as a chronic disorder, which can lead to diabetes and cardiovascular disease). Heredity may play a role here: if one parent is obese, there is a reasonable chance that the child will be too. And then there are the triggers all around us.

“Look around you on the street. You can get food everywhere and at such low prices. I see people on station platforms slurping out of enormous soft drink cups.

Twenty years ago you only saw that in the United States. And exercise? We’re doing less and less of it”, sighs Van Baak, who works at NUTRIM, the UM institute for nutrition research. “It’s just so unnecessary for overweight to cause so many health problems.”

The final report of the DiOGenes (Diet, Obesity and Genes) study was published in late 2010. The project had been running since 2006 at universities in eight European countries, supported by € 14.5 million in grants from the European Union. It was initiated by Wim Saris, UM professor of Human Nutrition, who quickly found himself at the reins of the largest dietary study ever conducted. The results have since appeared in renowned publications such as the New England

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Journal of Medicine and Pediatrics. Sponsors and partners included food producers like Unilever and Nestlé.

A total of 900 families took part, of which both parents and at least one child living at home were overweight.

A hundred of these families came from the Maastricht region.

Blood sugar levels “The biggest problem in obesity is not losing weight, but maintaining the new, lower weight”, says Van Baak. “Can small variations in diet stop us from gaining weight again, or limit the weight that we do gain? This was the key question in the DiOGenes study. In other words, we were looking for the most effective diet to prevent overweight. What happens to your weight if you eat more protein, and what effects do different types of carbohydrates have?”

An important difference between carbohydrates is the extent to which they increase blood sugar. Van Baak: “One measure of this is the glycaemic index, or GI. The assumption was that the faster the sugars enter the bloodstream, the greater the chance of weight gain.”

In Copenhagen and Maastricht, the research teams set up ‘supermarkets’ at the universities, where the families

could do their grocery shopping for free. First, the parents followed a two-month liquid diet in order to lose weight. This resulted in an average weight loss of around 11 kilos per person. Then the whole family tried to maintain their weight for six months, monitored by a dietician. “The focus was not on counting calories,” explains Van Baak, “but on learning a healthier way of eating. You’ll only maintain the desired weight if you continue to eat differently, and also less.”

content is of real relevance for the food industry, and they could easily do something about it in developing their products. In Australia you also see a logo on products with low GI. It’s true that we can now buy ‘lite’ products, but they sit on the shelves alongside products with a high fat or sugar content. This makes it all the more difficult for families to make healthy choices.”

Proteins The families in the study were divided into five groups who all followed different diets, varying in protein content and GI. “Normally, about 15% of our diet consists of protein. We were curious about what would happen to your weight if you increased that to 25%.”

The results showed that, on a high-protein, low-GI diet, participants’ weight did not increase. “We get protein from lean meat, cottage cheese, beans, peas and fish.

And the good carbohydrates are in rye bread, wholemeal bread, nuts, strawberries, apples and legumes.

With this diet you can eat until you’re full”, says Van Baak. “Incidentally, the benefits of a high-protein diet aren’t new. Some dieticians have been recommending this for quite some time. But what our study shows is which components in our diet really make a difference.

In this sense, DiOGenes is a genuine scientific milestone. With small studies, you still always end up with a stalemate. But now we know that obese people who really want to change can stay at their lower weight for longer if they follow a high-protein, low-GI diet.”

Nutrition guidelines So do the DiOGenes findings support the official recommendations of the Netherlands Nutrition Centre for preventing overweight? Their advice: eat a varied diet, with not too much fat or sugar. Van Baak: “The Nutrition Centre guidelines are aiming to cover the entire population, and mainly recommend fibre-rich products like bread, fruit and potatoes. For obese people you could refine these guidelines by specifically identifying high-protein products and the right type of carbohydrates. But it often takes a number of years before research results make their way into official recommendations.”

Van Baak emphasises that the DiOGenes study is not about preventing obesity - much more is needed for that. “You’d have to influence behaviour and exercise, and position food producers more actively. Protein

Marleen van Baak

Professor Marleen van Baak studied biology at the University of Amsterdam before obtaining her PhD at the Catholic University of Nijmegen in 1979. She worked as a Research Fellow at UM’s Department of Pharmacology until 1988, focusing on the effects of antihypertensive agents during exercise. She then transferred to the Department of Human Biology, where she has worked since.

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Leading in Learning

Roel Aries en Henriëtte Maassen van den Brink

No better place for Teachers Academy

than at ‘Leading in Learning’ Maastricht University

By Margot Krijnen

Professor Henriëtte Maassen van den Brink is one of the leading Dutch academics in the field of evidence-based education. “We provide evidence-based results and make these accessible to policymakers and teachers. We deliver proof of what works and what doesn’t.” In 2009 and 2010, she was proclaimed the ‘Most powerful woman in the Netherlands in the field of Education and Science’ by the Dutch magazine Opzij.

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Top Institute Ten years ago, Maassen van den Brink argued that education should be more strongly rooted in evidence: “Analogous to the situation in healthcare, education practitioners should have access to academic proof. Education practice and policy are not sufficiently based on academic evidence and there’s a large gap between research and practice. Our lobbying led to the setup of the Top Institute for Evidence Based Education Research (TIER) by the universities of Amsterdam, Groningen and Maastricht. TIER creates a connection between education practice, education research and education policy, and its research can be directly applied in economics and daily practice. We conduct meta-analyses, literature studies, evaluations and monitoring, and we make sure our results end up with the people who have to work with them.”

Large-scale experiments TIER currently conducts large-scale experiments for the Dutch Ministry of Education, Culture and Science.

Maassen van den Brink: “Among other things, we study the impact of team rewards on learning performance and dropout of pupils, the effects of prolonged school hours (i.e. extra teaching hours per week) for arithmetic and language teaching on pupils’ test scores, and the consequences of broad-based schools on the quality of the education. Broadbased schools (brede scholen) are based on a network of care and parenting facilities for children and parents, including education, childcare, welfare, cultural and sports facilities. We expect to obtain the results from these multi-annual national experiments in 2012. We’ve already studied the effects on dropout of having a strict policy on nonattendance and of raising the schoolleaving age, and both these policy measures have proven effective.

When we were studying the imple-

mentation of a higher school-leaving age, we found that companies quickly started plucking away pupils from school to give them a job before the implementation of the official measure (groenpluk). Consequently, more pupils were leaving school without a qualification. We’re still investigating how the results per region are influenced by market tendencies rather than by policy. All these research examples represent policy measures in the Dutch Governmental Agreement. It’s important that we find out whether these policies should be implemented on a large scale, and we can only demonstrate that if we know the evidence.”

Teachers Academy What better way to disseminate results than to transfer them directly to the target group? This is the aim of the Teachers Academy, founded at UM in 2009. “In the Teachers Academy we offer a two-year MSc in Evidence Based Innovation in Teaching (MEBIT) to fully qualified teachers in secondary education.

They are trained to become the experts on evidence-based education in their organisations. This has a positive effect on the schools, because their expert knowledge creates a quality mark for the institute: a school that works on the basis of evidence-based knowledge. The first 15 MEBIT students will graduate this summer. And recently, we started the MSc in Evidence Based Policy and Evaluation (MEPE) with 20 students.

Participants in this programme are policymakers from various organisations, ranging from the Ministry of Education and the Dutch Inspectorate of Education to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. We also offer minors to students from all UM faculties who wish to earn a teaching qualification in their professional field.”

Best Evidence Encyclopaedia But there’s more: “We’re also work-

Roel Ariës, MEd (1979), will graduate from the MEBIT programme in September 2011.

“I’m a history teacher with a master’s degree from Fontys University for applied sciences.

While teaching upper grades, I found that adolescent students were barely capable of reasoning. This is a major disadvantage, because 70% of the history finals consist of questions that require reasoning. I came across the Brain Based Learning (BBL) theory, which shows that the working memory is not fully developed in the adolescent mind. This is a whole new research area and neuropsychologists are informing schools about their findings. Unfortunately, students still have to meet the official exam requirements. I learned that the working memory can benefit from training. In the MEBIT programme at the Teachers Academy I got the opportunity to develop a training course that could improve my students’ reasoning abilities. It became the subject of my thesis. The results of the intervention in comparison to other training methods for reasoning abilities are remarkable: students in the trained classes showed significantly improved reasoning capabilities.

So I delivered proof that BBL training works on adolescents, and I hope to earn my PhD on the subject.

The Teachers Academy has truly opened my eyes regarding evidence-based working in education. Thanks to MEBIT, there will ultimately be more teachers with a PhD, which will undoubtedly improve the quality of education. In my organisation I’m often consulted for the knowledge I acquired here.

It’s hard work next to a full-time job, but it’s worth every minute!”

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Leading in Learning

graduates are voluntary ambassadors of evidence-based education in their schools and organisations.

Hopefully they’ll soon be given the opportunity to fulfil this role as an official part of their jobs.” And as for

ing on a Best Evidence Encyclopaedia that will provide online access to every study conducted on specific educational themes. You might compare it to a consumers’ association that helps you read and understand research results. We have our own editorial board of professors and sometimes we hire someone to assemble research on a certain theme.

Studies in our field are still relatively limited, but we try to systematically review and enter everything we find into the encyclopaedia.”

Economics of education “TIER contributes to the economics of education, which is crucial for this country,” says Maassen van den Brink.

“Besides natural gas and a harbour all we have is human capital, so the quality of that human capital is highly important. If you want to belong to the top 5 knowledge economies, you must at least know something about your human capital. We carry out studies on the cost effectiveness of educational interventions, which contributes to our knowledge on the economics of education. Combining educational economists with education experts would give mass to our research. It would allow us to systematically evaluate many factors that play a role in education. And trust me, it’s necessary to do that.”

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Future TIER and the Teachers Academy have great ambitions: “In cooperation with the Zuyd and Fontys higher vocational education institutes, we want to establish a School of Education, a teacher training school that offers grade one teachers’ programmes, later also for international

students. In addition, with the Rathenau Institute I’m developing an MSc in Evidence Based Science Policy that will make an important contribution to our underdeveloped science policy.

It’s important to get the time and the opportunity to keep working on your projects, so I hope we can continue after our five-year subsidy period.

And, of course, my wish is that evaluation and monitoring become a statutory element for every subsidy in education.”

Students So what careers are out there for graduates of the Teachers Academy and TIER MSc programmes? Maassen van den Brink: “Our students sometimes wonder what will happen after they earn their master’s degree. Will it have a positive impact on their careers, or will they just have to go back to teaching the same class?

Now, our students and soon-to-be

their academic development? “Two of our students are going on to start PhDs, one of them being Roel Ariës.

To us, Roel is a shining example of how you can get a student ready for a PhD in only two years. He’s done brilliantly and we’re proud to see him continue his academic career.”

Henriëtte Maassen van den Brink is professor of Evidence Based Education at Maastricht University and Academic Director of the Teachers Academy, positions that she shares with Professor Wim Groot. She is also Scientific Coordinator of TIER, professor of Education and Labour Economics at the University of Amsterdam and Chair of the Social and Behavioural Sciences division of the Netherlands Organisation for Scientific Research (NWO).

Vici grant awarded to Anita Jansen Anita Jansen has been awarded the prestigious Vici grant 2010. The FPN professor of Experimental Psychology, specialising in eating disorders, will put the NWO’s € 1.5 million grant towards her research over the coming five years. The Vici grant is one of the largest personal science grants in the Netherlands. Each year it is awarded to 32 innovative researchers;

in this round, Jansen is the only UM researcher to have received the honour.

Jansen will use the grant to investigate the psychological side of successful weight loss. Obesity is considered a biomedical problem triggered by environment factors. When we gain weight we will have trouble losing it – though occasionally we just might manage to do so.

Anita Janssen

Jansen aims to investigate which determinants predict who will successfully lose weight and who will not, and how we can learn to eat less.

CARIM researchers identify gene for development of heart failure CARIM researchers have managed to pin down the gene that underlies the development of heart failure: the microRNA-199b gene. They have also discovered a way to disable this gene, leading to immediate recovery.

“This research has been going on for five years now”, says research leader and molecular biologist Professor Leon de Windt, PhD. “We started with people; in dozens of patients with different diseases, we kept seeing an activation of the microRNA-199b gene. We discov-

ered that when we activated that gene, heart failure would develop. When we disabled it, the heart failure came to a complete stop and the recovery process started. Moreover, the heart muscle continued to recover even when the blood pressure remained high. And this therapy works even in the case of very advanced heart failure, which is quite exceptional.”

De Windt emphasises that his teams is using an as yet experimental, but extremely safe drug. “The medication is

Steven Maijoor selected as first chair of ESMA

financial supervision is consistent across Europe.

The chair of the European Securities and Markets Authority (ESMA) is responsible for representing ESMA, preparing the work of the Board of Supervisors, and chairing the meetings of the Board of Supervisors and the Management Board.

ESMA was set up on January 1 alongside the European Banking Authority and the European Insurance and Occupational Pensions Authority in a bid to ensure

Steven Maijoor (46) is a part-time professor at both Maastricht University and the VU University Amsterdam, conducting research on issues such as reporting, auditing and governance. From 2001 to 2004 he was dean of the School of Business and Economics at Maastricht University. From 2004 he was a director at the Netherlands Authority for the Financial Markets (AFM), where he was

Leon de Windt

based on biologically manipulating naturally occurring molecules. It disables the microRNA-199b gene via natural processes in the body’s cells.” It is expected to be another three or so years before the new drug is made available.

in charge of financial reporting, auditing issues and market integrity supervision.

He is now set to serve as full-time chair of ESMA for five years, based at ESMA’s headquarters in Paris.

Steven Maijoor

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Portrait

Martin Paul

“Be who you are”

By Annelotte Huiskes

It all started with a call from Jo Ritzen in 2008. Would he like to be dean of the Maastricht Faculty of Health, Medicine and Life Sciences (FHML)? Three years later, Martin Paul, MD, professor of Clinical Pharmacology and Toxicology, is set to succeed Ritzen as president of the university’s Executive Board.

“When Jo called me I was 50 and had been dean of the Charité university medical centre in Berlin for eight years. I was ready for a new challenge and Maastricht University (UM) has a great reputation in Germany – in fact, much better than that in its own country.

Sometimes I get the impression that not everyone in the Netherlands understands what we do here. The fact that UM is now the first Dutch university to

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choose an international president is something I see as quite logical. After all, we are the most international university in the Netherlands.”

Links As dean of the FHML and vice president of the Maastricht University Medical Centre (Maastricht UMC+), Paul has been collaborating in the university’s strategic

programme from day one in Maastricht. The management team that he now chairs as president of the Executive Board is the same team that he also served in as dean – so not much is changing, in his view.

His main aim is to continue the policy that has been pursued in recent years.

“I see Jo Ritzen as a symbol of the major growth phase of the university. Now we’re entering a phase where we need to draw links between all our different parts; we have to work together to strengthen what we’ve achieved. This calls for integrated leadership. The Maastricht UMC+ and FHML can’t do without each other, but nor can the Life Sciences cluster in Randwyck do without the inner city humanities and social sciences faculties, and vice versa. When I came to Maastricht, my first diagnosis was that we’re facing a case of ‘Balkanisation’. When the university and the new Maastricht UMC+ were being established, naturally everyone focused on building up and defending their own domains. But now that, as a 35-year-old university, we’ve reached middle age, it’s time to look more at the links between the different elements.

That’s what I see as my task.”

Niche “Maastricht is a unique university that has no need to imitate a typical Randstad university. It’s a mistake to try to create a Leiden on the Meuse or even a Harvard on the Meuse within 10 years here. You have to be identifiable as ‘Maastricht on the Meuse’, both nationally and internationally. My motto is ‘be who you are’.

This university is characterised by Problem-Based Learning; this means we have to ensure that we offer outstanding education across the board and focus on research themes in which we want to distinguish ourselves. Two examples: the CAPHRI research institute is leading the way in integrated research in public health and primary care across Europe, and METEOR, the Maastricht Research School of Economics of Technology and Organisations, is a unique research structure within the School of Business and Economics.”

Euregion without borders “In the future, I’d like to see the borders in the Euregion effectively disappear. If we can form a true network with Aachen, Liége, Leuven and Hasselt, both economically and socially, then we’ll be a vital region comparable to the Randstad. UM stands at the heart of the Euregion, and has to play a pioneering role in this process. In Limburg there’s talk of shrinkage and poor employment prospects, certainly from the perspective of the rest of the Netherlands. This gives the university

the opportunity to play a positive role. It’s not only about education and research, but also about employment opportunities. What happens to our students?

“This means working on agreements with Wallonia, Flanders and North Rhine-Westphalia. Often we’re faced with pragmatic problems unrelated to the academic context. For instance, the Maastricht UMC+ has been working for years to set up a European hospital together with Aachen. But this also means sitting around the table with health insurers to figure out how Dutch and German patients can be reimbursed for their treatment in that kind of European centre.

You have to solve questions like these as a lobbyist, together with politicians. To that end I have good contacts in Germany – I know not only the university context there but also the political circuits.”

Academic or manager?

“I’ve been working in tough management positions since 1997 and I’ve always managed to stay active as an academic as well. I’m what you might call an ‘academic manager’. I think that academic institutions need to have academics as managers. My specialisation is clinical pharmacology in the field of cardiovascular diseases. As president of the Executive Board, I’ll still remain a professor in my field. I’ll keep on teaching and doing research, be it to a much lesser degree. That will help me stay in touch with my academic foundations, which is very important for my managerial health. Broadly speaking, I think that in principle we simply have to continue on with what we’ve started. If in eight years’ time Maastricht is recognised nationally and internationally in the same exceptional and positive light that it already is in Germany, then I’ll have achieved something.”

Martin Paul studied medicine at Heidelberg University in Germany and completed his thesis in pharmacology at the

University of California, San Diego. In 1995 he became full professor of Clinical Pharmacology at the Benjamin Franklin Medical Center and in 1997 chair of the Institute of Clinical Pharmacology and Toxicology, both at the Freie Universität (FU) Berlin. From 1997 to 2003 he served as dean of the FU’s Medical Faculty, and from 2004 to 2008 as dean and vice president of the Executive Board of the Charité Medical Faculty in Berlin. He has been active in several professional organisations, including as chair of DEAN, the European network of deans and academic managers from all disciplines. He also served on the board of the European Centre for Strategic Management of Universities (ESMU).

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Professor and student

Rob Bauer (l) en Daniel Hann (r)

Professor Rob Bauer and student Daniel Hann

By Femke Kools

Professor Rob Bauer asked Daniel Hann twice if he was interested in doing a PhD at the Finance Department. Hann was flattered, but not easily convinced.

“I saw he had a ‘research heart’”, Bauer says four years later. And he saw right.

One of Hann’s papers was awarded the American Moskowitz Prize for Socially Responsible Investing from the renowned Haas School of Business in Berkeley, and now it’s raining job offers.

Companies that have a good handle on their environmental management pay millions of euros less when financing themselves with debt than companies with questionable environmental practices. This is one of the outcomes of Daniel Hann’s PhD research, supervised by Professor Rob Bauer and Dr Jeroen Derwall from the Maastricht University School of Business and Economics. Their research is among the first to demonstrate the effect of environmental management on the costs of corporate bonds. When Hann began his PhD at the Finance Department, Bauer suggested that he investigate whether corporate social responsibility affects the credit market. From there Hann took off and shaped his own research focus.

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For the non-economists among us: a corporate bond is issued when a corporation, for example Philips, wants to borrow money on the capital market.

A syndicate of banks helps the corporation to place the loan with a group of institutional investors, such as pension funds. At that point, the interest rate, which Philips has to pay annually on the borrowed amount for as long as the loan exists, is also fixed.

The crucial question is: By lending Philips money, what risk do you run as an investor?

Bauer: “This usually revolves around the company’s credit worthiness. But our study now shows that environmental management also plays a role in determining these rates.”

Network With ‘our’ he refers not only to Hann, Derwall and himself, but also to the network of researchers and financial professionals that the European Centre for Corporate Engagement (ECCE) has built up over the past few years. “This network has definitely helped me develop”, confirms Hann, who spent six months at the NYU Stern School of Business for his research. At the same time, Bauer stresses that Hann wrote the award-winning paper practically by himself. “Just like it’s supposed to be in a PhD. The first two years I put in quite some content and discussion, but in the third and fourth years, I like my PhD students to work independently.

That benefits them in their careers.”

That his career would start off with a PhD is something Hann would not have seriously considered a few years

ago. But then he took a course on institutional investors with Bauer, who views these courses also as a ‘hunting ground’ for PhD students. Besides motivation and the will to work hard, he uses a third criterion: “I have to like them as a person. Otherwise the close interactions over a four-year period just don’t work out.”

Trade-off Because Bauer took on a few too many projects and PhD students at the same time, Hann didn’t have as many ‘close interactions’ as his professor intended.

“Still, Rob was always accessible when I needed advice, thanks to his consistent open-door policy. A positive trade-off was that I had more freedom to take initiative in my research and experiments. His trust in me and my work have helped me build up my confidence. And Jeroen Derwall also made an important contribution to my research. His knowledge of the literature and engagement throughout the research process have without doubt added to my work.”

One of the struggles that Daniel had to overcome was the novelty of this field of research. He is one of the first people to really dive into the impact that sustainability issues have on the pricing of corporate bonds. Bauer: “I think that’s also why he won the Moskowitz Prize. We broadened the scope of sustainable investments to the bond market, which is extremely relevant given the size of that market, both for corporations and investors.”

The real thing Several financial institutions have invited Hann to present his research and some have made job offers. “Of course, I’m curious to see for myself whether studies like mine affect financial practices, since I’m convinced that research ultimately needs to make a practical con-

tribution. Although my current focus is on practice, this doesn’t necessarily exclude more research in the future. I already noticed some interesting research topics during those company visits”, he smiles.

“That’s the research heart I identified!”, Bauer laughs.

Both have learned a lot during the past four years and a few months. Hann: “My most important lesson was probably that you have to move on at a certain point.

I tend to get lost in details and I’m never satisfied.”

Bauer: “At a certain point, your own feedback doesn’t help you anymore. You need feedback from others and time is of the essence.”

Bauer himself learned where his personal limits lie.

“Three PhD students at a time, all at a different phase of their work, is the max I can handle, together with all my other activities. I’m afraid I didn’t give Daniel all the time that he deserved, but fortunately, he’s a person who’s perfectly capable of working independently.”

Daniel agrees: “Nobody said it would be easy upfront, but you see yourself develop. I found it a worthwhile process. And in the end, you realise that it’s not about the title, but about what you learn along the way.”

Rob Bauer Rob Bauer is professor of Institutional Investors at the Maastricht University School of Business and Economics and director of the European Centre for Corporate Engagement (ECCE).

Daniel Hann Daniel Hann will defend his PhD dissertation ‘Stakeholder theory in finance’ in June and will continue his career in the financial sector.

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Passionate professor

The constitution

never ceases to fascinate Monica Claes

By Jolien Linssen

Think of a professor and you are apt to picture an absent-minded, white-haired man, perhaps even wearing a lab coat. Though this kind of characters is more likely to be found in films than in real life, the truth is that the vast majority of those holding top academic positions in the Netherlands are men. With the appointment of Monica Claes, professor of European and Comparative Constitutional Law, Maastricht University can be doubly pleased: she is first and foremost an inspiring researcher who, by the way, happens to be a woman.

For someone who never explicitly dreamed of an academic career, Belgian Monica Claes has built an impressive CV over the years. “During my studies at the Law Faculty of the Catholic University of Leuven, I discovered that I was very interested in constitutional law because of its close connection to politics”, she says.

“Soon after, I became fascinated by European integration and its legal implications.”

When talking to Claes, one realises that perhaps career planning is less about planning and more about doing the things you like to do. “I have always enjoyed studying, writing and researching”, she explains, “and that is what I’ve been doing for a long time now”. After a postgraduate degree at the Bruges College of Europe, a PhD at Maastricht University and a profes-

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sorship in Tilburg, she has now returned to Maastricht to, first of all, complete The European and National

Constitutional Law Project (EuNaCon), for which she has received a large grant from the European Research Council.

EuNaCon “It is an enormous project, very challenging and enjoyable”, Claes enthusiastically refers to EuNaCon. “Together with four post-docs, I am carrying out comprehensive comparative legal research into the national constitutions of a dozen of member states of the European Union (EU). These constitutions are often referred to in EU treaties as being based on common principles and traditions. Strangely enough, no thorough research into these common principles and traditions has been done”.

The same holds for the concept of constitutional identity, another matter that, in Claes’s opinion, has been in dire need of academic attention. “The term constitutional identity appears in both French and German constitutional laws, as well as in the Treaty of Lisbon”, she explains. “In the latter, it is stated that the EU maintains to respect the constitutional identity of its individual member states. Nonetheless, the meaning of the concept remains vague. What is this constitutional identity made of? When is it violated, and who ought to judge whether this is the case?”

There is still a good deal of work to do in this field and that makes EuNaCon, an ambitious project by nature, even more interesting. “I believe people have been waiting for this type of research”, says Claes. “This really helps science move forward. It is exciting.”

Monica Claes

Ivory Tower Claes is a scholar at heart, yet one that is clearly aware that her responsibility as a professor transcends the boundaries of the academic world.

Being a member of the Young Academy, part of the Royal Netherlands Academy of Sciences does not only give her the opportunity to meet colleagues from other disciplines, but also to contribute to the popularisation of their collective academic efforts. “We cannot lock ourselves up in an ivory tower”, she states. “We have an obligation towards society”.

An obligation which made itself felt last year, when she was appointed a member of the State Commission Constitution [Staatscommisie Grondwet] by the Dutch cabinet. The commission’s task was to investigate the Dutch constitution on a number of issues, including its accessibility and meaning for Dutch citizens, its relation to international treaties and the absence of a preamble. Claes: “It was a fun and fascinating experience, but at the same time a very difficult one. We were working under time pressure and although the commis-

sion initially seemed to agree on a lot of matters, the opposite turned out to be the case. So I think it is unlikely that our recommendations will be incorporated into the constitution”.

Instead of changing the constitution, Claes would like to see politicians using it more actively than they do now. “The Netherlands lack a firm constitutional tradition”, she says.

“Delicate political issues are usually solved by consensus, without turning to the constitution. This is a pity, for it could perfectly serve as a guideline. Because it enumerates the values that we deem most important, it poses the limits between which the political debate ought to take place. Both in politics, as well as in the Council of State, its significance should be articulated more explicitly, I find. Someone needs to stand up for the constitution and the values set out in it”.

In her role as professor of European and Comparative Constitutional Law, Monica Claes is doing this in her very own way. “I never set myself the goal to become a professor before reach-

ing the age of forty, or something like that”, she admits. “But while I was working hard on the topics that I am interested in, this opportunity opened itself up to me. It is a job that asks for planning and organization on the part of my family, but I enjoy it a lot. Now that I am a professor, I also want to be a good one. I still have a lot of work to do at Maastricht University.”

Monica Claes studied law at KU Leuven (Belgium) and specialised in European Law at the College of Europe in Bruges.

She completed her doctoral studies at Maastricht University. Her PhD thesis entitled “The National Courts’ Mandate in the European Constitution” was awarded the Staatsrechtprijs in 2006. She lectured at Maastricht until 2005, then worked as a first senior lecturer and then a professorial position, at Tilburg University. Claes is currently working as professor of European and Comparative Constitutional Law at Maastricht University.

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Euregional collaboration

Leo Koole

BioMiMedics:

Euregional collaboration as basis for top performance

By Jos Cortenraad

Cross-border scientific collaboration. It should be a fact of life, certainly here in the Meuse-Rhine Euregion with its high concentration of universities and research institutes. Practitioners have been resistant. But the founding of BioMiMedics is a big step in the right direction, as UM professor and project leader Leo Koole explains.

It was great news that came in mid-January this year.

The universities of Maastricht, Aachen, LiĂŠge and Hasselt, together with renowned research institutes and the business sector, will be developing a range of new materials: biomaterials to be used in the human body. Gauze that heals burns faster, internal swabs

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that help to heal surgical wounds, and maybe even a tissue substitute for blood vessels. The European Commission is making almost â‚Ź 3.5 million available for the project, an amount that will be matched by the universities, provinces, ministries and businesses involved.

Finally “Finally,” exclaims Leo Koole, project coordinator and UM professor of Biomaterials, “a cross-border programme that brings together the best institutes. Here in Maastricht we have almost 20 years of experience with biomaterials.

DWI in Aachen is an institute of world renown, including in the field of weaving technology. Liége has one of the best faculties of veterinary medicine in the world, and Hasselt is leading the way in the development of biosensors. So it’s fantastic that we’re now able to cluster all this expertise and knowledge. This is really a perfect example of new-style science. These days, it’s all about collaboration. If you want to propose something in the world, then you need to carry a certain weight. With BioMiMedics we’re taken seriously, that’s for sure.”

Also timely is the collaboration with the medical profession, as well as established and new companies. “Direct and indirect government funding is getting tighter and tighter. Of course, in science you shouldn’t let the law be prescribed by the market, but it’s certainly important that scientific research be attuned to practice. Products need to be developed that can be used in practice. We have little use for a research report that ends up tucked away in a drawer. In developing biomaterials, you can’t do without the knowledge of doctors in university hospitals, nor without the companies that manufacture the products.

In BioMiMedics, all these disciplines come together.”

Network Koole is not one to boast, but without his involvement it is questionable whether BioMiMedics could have come about at all. “Well,” says the Zeeland native who took up his UM professorship, among other roles, in 1992, “it was mainly my network that came in handy. Over the years I’ve made many contacts, especially in Aachen and Liége.

When I was asked last year to set up a Euregional research centre for biomaterials, I went knocking on the doors of my scientific friends. In academia as elsewhere, interpersonal relationships are important. It helps if you trust and like one another. In any event, the responses were extremely positive. Not least thanks to the nice little sum of € 3.4 million in Interreg funding that we had on hand.

After all, good plans are easier to achieve if the money’s there.”

Naturally, the institutes in Liége, Aachen and Hasselt aren’t just getting a free ride. “Of course not. Just like in Limburg, the universities have sought out co-financing; that’s one of the grant conditions. On the Dutch side, we’ve received contributions from the Province of Limburg, the Ministry for Economic Affairs and the university. And various companies have also got on board

with contributions. Significantly, that means that they see a future for biomaterials. So now we’re getting down to business with a total of 10 parties.”

Biomaterial And what exactly will these 10 parties do in the coming years? Win the Nobel Prize for developing a new substitute for blood vessels? Koole laughs. “We do ultimately aim to develop a biomaterial to replace blood vessels. Prostheses are used today, but they don’t always function well. They get congested, cause infections or other problems. We think we’ll be able to prevent that by using natural materials. We want to start with blood-vessel prostheses for the limbs. If that goes well, we’ll move on to the coronary arteries, for example. But that’s looking very far ahead.

With our 40 or so people in the various locations, we’ll first focus on a new generation of gauze dressings made from natural materials that help to heal burns better and faster. We’re also studying whether a natural material can be used to produce swabs that keep abdominal wounds closed after surgery. We’re thinking of flax, which is very strong and biodegrades over time without causing infections or other complications. That’s our most important task: developing materials from natural substances that can be used in the human body, like prostheses, skin and vessels.”

The Meuse-Rhine Euregion as a global hotspot for biomaterials. But what will happen once the three-year project period comes to an end? “Of course, resources are becoming more and more scarce. We have to look beyond that horizon. I’m certain that we won’t be stopping after three years. By that time biomaterials will be well and truly anchored in the region. The project will also bring us PhD candidates and new master’s programmes, and may even be the prelude to a full-fledged science faculty. I’m one to dig in, not just scratch the surface. With BioMiMedics, the bar is set high.”

Leo Koole (1959) studied chemistry at the Eindhoven University of Technology. After obtaining his PhD, he spent two years working at Uppsala University in Sweden, where he established a biomaterials laboratory. In 1992 he moved to Maastricht with the aim of doing the same here. Koole was also one of the pioneers of Biomat, the first company under the umbrella of UM Holding.

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Sustainability

Fencing off the Limburg hills is not sustainable

By Jules Coenegracht

Five or so years ago the question was raised at the Province of Limburg: how are we doing in terms of sustainability? A budget was made available to find the answer, and Annemarie van Zeijl-Rozema’s PhD research was born. “When it comes to sustainable development, you need an environment that supports and facilitates. A province can be highly suited to this.”

“Sustainability is about much more than just the environment”, says Van Zeijl-Rozema. This comes as a surprise, because in the minds of many people the two concepts are closely linked.

The point, she says, is that in our actions we weigh up not only environmental aspects, but also social and economic ones. “A mobility plan for the Maastricht hills (the Heuvelland), for example, is not first and foremost a sustainability plan. If it were only about the environment and you wanted to let nature go its own way, you could just as well put up a fence around it. But that’s not economically sensible, because you want to attract tourists. Nor is it practical socially, because the residents there need to be able to get from A to B. In sustainable development you always make certain judgements. And by identifying all these considerations, you make your choices very transparent.”

In her dissertation, Van Zeijl-Rozema examines the barriers that are obstructing the implementation of

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sustainability policy in the Province of Limburg. “One very important one – and this is not specific to Limburg – is the lack of vision. There’s no academic definition of ‘sustainable development’. You can’t say: if you do this and that, you’re being sustainable. It’s about a vision of the future: what sort of Limburg, what sort of Netherlands, do you want to live in? If that vision is already there, it’s not linked to sustainability aspects.”

Another barrier that Van Zeijl-Rozema identified stemmed from the fact that people do want to behave sustainably, but aren’t sure what to do. “People don’t see economics, for example, as a part of sustainable development, although their actions are largely determined by economic aspects.”

Moreover, a more sustainable lifestyle need not cost extra time or money.

This is where a change can be made, suggests Van Zeijl-Rozema: use legislation, regulation or fiscal measures to make the sustainable choices the most obvious ones. “Having said that, fiscal

Annemarie van Zeijl-Rozema

measures were not the most popular among my respondents.” Along with her dissertation, Van Zeijl-Rozema will also write a policy report for the Province. “I didn’t want to do something purely academic; I wanted something that would be useful in practice too.”

Annemarie van Zeijl-Rozema works at ICIS (International Centre for Integrated assessment and Sustainable development), at the Faculty of Humanity and Sciences.

Yo-yo gene identified One of the hardest parts of losing weight is to maintain the target weight once we have reached it. Various studies show that up to 80% of people who lose weight gain it all back within a year.

It now appears that women’s ability to maintain their new weight after a diet is partly genetic: a gene involved in regulating blood pressure has been shown to predict whether some women are prone

to yo-yo dieting. These findings may lead to the development of a test for the risk of the yo-yo effect.

Dr Ping Wang, of Prof. Edwin Mariman’s research group at NUTRIM, Maastricht University, published these findings in the online scientific journal PLoS ONE. Her research is part of the Maastricht contribution to the DiOGEnes study.

CAPHRI receives excellent scores in external evaluation CAPHRI, Maastricht University’s School for Public Health and Primary Care, has been classified as ‘excellent’, the highest possible score in an official external evaluation. An external committee of leading national and international scientists praised the outstanding quality and social relevance of CAPHRI’s research and education.

According to the report drafted by the review committee, CAPHRI is an international leader in the field of extramural research. The committee deemed its successful and innovative research initiatives as an exemplary model for other academic institutions around the world.

In its evaluation, the committee concluded that the scientific quality and social relevance of the school was excellent: the impressive output of all CAPHRI research programmes has significantly improved in terms of quantity and quality over the past six years.

Team Caphri

The committee also described the large number of articles published in top international journals like Nature, Science, The New England Journal of Medicine and The Lancet as an astonishing achievement in view of CAPHRI’s research topics.

CAPHRI has succeeded in putting some very topical and socially relevant issues on the agenda. What’s more, it recently

launched the Centre for Care Technology Research (CCTR), a new research centre for healthcare technology together with the University of Twente and the Netherlands Organisation for Applied Scientific Research (TNO). The committee also noted that CAPHRI’s breeding ground policy for young researchers is an exceptionally fruitful one and that its graduates enjoy excellent career prospects for the future.

19

Problem-Based Learning abroad

View on Maputo

Paving the way

to student-centred education in Mozambique

By Isabel de Sousa

Student-centred learning approaches are still a novelty to most higher education institutions in Mozambique. For Eduardo Mondlane University (UEM), the time has come to embark on a large-scale project which will leave classical teaching methods behind. According to Herco Fonteijn and Annechien Deelman, who have recently come back from Maputo, this project is one of a kind.

Network Maastricht University (UM) is internationally renowned for using Problem-Based Learning, a student-centred learning method, in all its programmes. Through Mundo, the Maastricht University Centre for International Cooperation in Academic Development, UM has often been involved in projects, in Mozambique and other parts of the world, aimed at assisting universities in implementing student-centred approaches in their curricula. “Maastricht University has been cooperating with Mozambican universities for over 10 years now, but this project is different from the projects I’ve been involved in before, which is a good thing” says Annechien Deelman, project manager at Mundo. “Because it is such a large-scale project involving 16 UEM facul-

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ties and schools, we have to be innovative, get financially creative and work accurately, often under time constraint.”

Why student-centred learning?

“Mozambique has been developing at a fast pace and so has the labour market. Universities have to ensure that their graduates meet the demands of the changing labour market” says Herco Fonteijn, associate professor of Work and Social Psychology at the Faculty of Psychology and Neuroscience. “Student-centred learning, in whatever form it may take, appears to be an adequate teaching and learning approach for bridging theory and practice. Traditional educational methods are less suited to serve this purpose.”

Project goals “We are currently in the inception phase”, says Herco Fonteijn. “At UEM we met with the faculty deans, groups of students and members of the academic staff. I’d say the main goal is to stimulate UEM faculties/schools to go ahead with student-centred learning. At the end of this project, I’d like to see a considerable number of academics at UEM sharing knowledge, experimenting with studentcentred learning methods and introducing these methods in their curricula. Knowledge management is also an important component of this project. We plan to create a website to sustain the project online. It will serve as a knowledge sharing platform, include examples of good practice and allow academics to take the results of this project further.”

so valuable. Fortunately, Nuffic (Netherlands organisation for international cooperation in higher education) gives us the room we need to analyse the current situation with our partners, discuss the possibilities available and only then –together with UEM – set priorities.

Scarce means The standards of life in Mozambique are significantly lower than the ones we are used to, and that also applies to university facilities. “Poverty is a serious issue in Mozambique”, says Herco Fonteijn. “Sometimes the means are simply not available.”

poverty which is more than a valid reason for wanting to do your best.”

“At the moment universities are facing serious funding cuts”, adds Annechien Deelman. “This year, Mozambique’s university budgets have been cut by 40 per cent. In addition, only 20 per cent of the project’s budget is allocated to equipment. In face of this, we have to choose carefully what we spend our money on. For instance, we’re thinking of making extensive use of online resources as they are a cost effective alternative to books and study material.”

How have people responded so far?

Annechien Deelman: “On the whole, people have responded very positively but, as with everything, some people are less receptive to change. That’s why an inception phase is

Herco Fonteijn explains, “People in Mozambique are used to talking with each other. Discussing things is part of their culture, it is just a question of getting used to having this open and participative attitude in the classroom as well.”

Mozambican students vs Dutch students Herco Fonteijn: “I think in general students in Mozambique are more eager to learn than students here. Many of them are the only ones in their family who have the opportunity to study. Besides, pursuing a degree is also a way to escape

Future developments According to Annechien Deelman, there are many possibilities as far as participative learning methods are concerned. “I think UM can play an active role in this project.

We’re going to Maputo again in April. The purpose of our second visit is to find out what each faculty/school wants to focus on and what support they need from our end to achieve their goals in the next four years.”

Herco Fonteijn: “In the meantime, we’ll be in close contact with our partners in Mozambique reporting back the results of the meetings, answering questions, and so forth.

We’re also going to approach students via Facebook.

The idea is to create a Facebook group to keep students in contact with each other. We’re currently looking for Portuguese speaking students at the UM who would like to contribute to this project.”

Students of Eduardo Mondlane University (UEM)

Entrance administrative building UEM

21

Debate

Fred Zijlstra

Thomas Dohmen

The economist and the psychologist on incentives and labour shortages

By Jos Cortenraad

The labour market is picking up, while the workforce is shrinking due to the ageing population. The resulting staff shortage is a recipe for disaster, as demographers and researchers well know. The crucial question for employers, of course, is: how can I get my staff to stick around? Fred Zijlstra, UM professor of Work and Organisational Psychology, and his colleague Thomas Dohmen from the Research Centre for Education and the Labour Market (ROA) pull up a chair for an intense discussion.

In a tight labour market, the rewards increase. But are higher salaries and fat bonuses really an effective way of fostering loyalty? Surprisingly enough, it’s not a resounding ‘yes’ from the economist. “Money can be an incentive, but it’s certainly not always the right incentive”, Dohmen begins. “As an employer you have to know how to motivate your people. And for that you shouldn’t see them as a homogenous group.

One employee might be motivated by a performance bonus, while another is quite attached to a fixed salary, to security. Or they might prefer flexible working hours, trips abroad or training opportunities as

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rewards. And then there are the age differences.

Those new to the workforce will view rewards differently than older colleagues. As an employer, your task is to know exactly what motivates your people.

And of course, you also have to make clear what the possibilities are. What you yourself want and what your company’s mission is. In a nuclear power plant, you’d rather work with employees who avoid risks.

A bonus system would be useless there. So: find those people who fit with your organisation, and determine how best to reward them.”

Intrinsic

The psychologist agrees – in principle. “At least if you’re talking about incentives”, Zijlstra points out. “Economists like doing that. I don’t think so much in terms of ‘financial incentives’. This suggests very strongly that people ‘respond’, but often they themselves decide on what they want. In my discipline, I tend to look more at what intrinsically motivates people. Of course, you need an income to survive, so you want to be compensated for the time that you put in. But in an organisation it’s also about the atmosphere in a company, the climate. A boss who has empathy, is interested in you and gives you a pat on the back. That’s a question of leadership, people skills. As far as I’m concerned it’s the most important factor in good leadership.

People perform better in a pleasant atmosphere, and you can also ask more of them.”

“People want to be challenged”, Zijlstra continues.

“Why do employees start craving their pensions at some point? Because they’ve been doing the same tricks for 10, 15 years. They’re fed up. They’re no longer learning and are starting to lose touch with the rest of the staff and the new working methods. Their skills grow obsolete, their capacity to learn starts to deteriorate. You can’t motivate this group anymore with a bonus or the next salary scale. That’s why it’s so important to continually invest in staff training.

Life-long learning, right up until the end of their careers. And of course I agree with Thomas that a team of workers is not a homogenous group. In general, older people have experience and wisdom, while younger people deal better with new technologies.

You can’t impose generic requirements on a group like that. Diversification is absolutely necessary.”

Individualisation Dohmen nods. He, too, calls for life-long learning and individualisation. “Whatever the sector. It still happens all too often that people have to make do for 40 years with the training that they got when they were just starting out. That’s just not good enough at a time when everything is changing so rapidly. But I’d still say that financial incentives can certainly be useful.

There’s a big group of people who are happy to run faster and jump higher to take that bonus home.

But performance pay also means a variable salary.

That scares off risk-averse workers. You should never put someone who’s ever chosen a permanent job in education on performance pay. That will lead to stress and sick leave. You have to motivate this group in other ways. But the situation is quite different for stockbrokers. They’ll perform for a bonus.”

This last comment does not go down well with Zijlstra. “Variable compensation tends to invite strategic behaviour. That is: people don’t do what’s good for the organisation, but what’s good for their wallets instead. It only fuels greed. The bonus culture and absurd management salaries have caused a great deal of damage. They’ve led to a society in which even directors of universities and other institutions take home ridiculously high salaries. The public sector is precisely the sort of sector that has to promote intrinsic satisfaction, where civil servants choose for security and stability. High salaries don’t gel with this. Yet I see that the bonus culture still exists, to my surprise, even now with the crisis behind us. And the banking world is as greedy as ever, if not more so. I’m afraid that the labour shortage isn’t doing much to help.”

24-hour economy The two professors will not agree on the money incentive. The question remains what the solution is for the projected labour shortages. The ‘24-hour economy’ perhaps, in which the work is spread over 7 days, 24 hours a day? Here there is greater consensus: a no from both. “It seems great, working from home at times that suit you”, says Dohmen. “But in practice this will mean that people no longer get any peace. Our stress hormones will irrevocably get the upper hand, with all the ensuing repercussions.” Zijlstra nods.

“The expectations are higher in the 24-hour economy, because you can always be working. That means stress, poorer sleep quality, more pressure. Don’t do it.”

Thomas Dohmen (1972, Heinsberg) studied economics in Warwick and

Maastricht. In 2003 he obtained his PhD at UM with a dissertation on the domestic labour market. He has been director of ROA and professor of Education and the Labour Market at UM since 2007. He also holds various management and other positions at the Limburg Institute for Business and Economic Research (LIBER), the Maastricht Research School of Economics of Technology and Organizations (Meteor) and different Dutch and German research institutes.

Fred Zijlstra (1956, Bolsward) has been UM professor of Work and Organisational Psychology since 2006, and previously worked as a professor at the University of Surrey in the UK. He presently chairs the UM Department of Work and Social Psychology as well as the Work and Organisation sector of NIP, the Dutch professional association for psychologists.

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Culture

Maaike Meijer

The poem as vision

Biography of M. Vasalis sees the light

By Annelotte Huiskes

It is now six years since Maaike Meijer, professor of Gender and Diversity at the Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences, began work on her biography of M. Vasalis. The book pays tribute to Vasalis’s poems, which – though only 100 were published in her lifetime – remain among the most widely read in the Netherlands. “Actually, my book is about creativity.

I’ve tried to describe her life in the context of her work and the creative process that underlies it. My main question was: why did she stop publishing poems after 1954?”

M. Vasalis is the pseudonym for Margaretha Droogleever FortuynLeenmans (1909–1998), whose three collections of poems published between 1940 and 1954 enjoyed unprecedentedly high print runs. “If your work sells well, you’re immediately viewed with suspicion by the literary elite”, says Meijer. “If you’re a woman

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as well, it won’t be long before you’re accused of simple and one-dimensional writing. This is what happened to Vasalis. She did get recognition, but her male peers from the literary movement ‘de Vijftigers’ still accused her of being simple and outmoded.

“For me, this was the gender aspect

that drew me to Vasalis: female poets are always taken much less seriously than men. Female artists are more often accused of being too popular and having too little depth, too much nature and too little culture. I want to show that in fact this poet is far from outmoded, and she deserves to be taken seriously.”

Vision Meijer was not new to Vasalis: as early as 1988, she devoted a chapter to the poet in her PhD dissertation De lust tot lezen (‘The desire to read’). A literature expert originally specialised in the Middle Ages, Meijer came to discover that a number of Vasalis’s poems could be considered as belonging to the visionary literature.

tough time for her. Her son died of polio, her husband (also a psychiatrist) had a nervous breakdown in 1943, and the famine in the following year was terrible. Vasalis was active in the resistance and even had a child hiding in her house. She was shocked that the people of Amsterdam did so little to resist the deportation of the Jews.

She lost her faith in humanity.”

“Suddenly I saw that some poems are just descriptions of mystical experiences, and can be read within the context of mysticism in the tradition of someone like Hadewych. Mysticism is a certain experience of reality that comes in sudden bursts. You can’t conjure it up; it takes you by surprise.

Present and past fall away. It’s a moment of overwhelming insight, a revelation that can also be quite terrifying. This is how Vasalis’s poems came to her. She could only write in that state of heightened awareness.

The poem went down on paper just so; she didn’t need to change a word.

What I found while writing the biography is that Vasalis knew that she had mystical experiences. She immersed herself in the literature on mysticism and described her experiences in her diary. She would write ‘MG’ in the margin, for mystieke gewaarwording (mystical experience).”

From 1954, living in Groningen, Vasalis fell into a deep melancholy. She described this difficult period in letters to her close friend, the writer Gerard Reve. In despair, she came up with all sorts of reasons why she was no longer able to write: the death of her son, the war that had destroyed her equilibrium. She had lost her inner peace and concentration. “I show her struggle, and the fact that creativity is not given forever. It can subside and then you’re lost all of a sudden. But happily, after her 85th birthday, her creativity returned. She started writing poems again. She dreamt a lot, and because she described this in her diary I was able to see that some of her poems emerged straight from her dreams.

A number of these poems were published posthumously in the collection De oude kustlijn (‘The old coastline’).”

“It’s not the cutting that hurts, but the being cut off” After the publication of her three collections, Parken en woestijnen (‘Parks and deserts’, 1940), De vogel Phoenix (‘The bird Phoenix’, 1947) and Vergezichten en gezichten (‘Views and faces’, 1954), Vasalis stopped writing.

“She struggled enormously with that loss of creativity. The mystical experiences were gone, and she felt cut off somehow. She’d had many such experiences when she was young, while she was studying in Leiden and working as a young psychiatrist in Santpoort. She even retained her creativity during the war, though it was a

Discretion One factor that prompted Meijer’s work was the rumour that there had to be a great deal more work by Vasalis that had not been published. And indeed, she brought to light an opera libretto of The little mermaid as well as various essays and poems. “I often had this sense of discovery. Vasalis would sometimes write a poem in pencil on a prescription sheet.

She had very small, almost illegible doctor’s handwriting. When she was young, it was quite large, but as she got older it became smaller and smaller. These sheets were so faded that I spent long hours peering through a magnifying glass to read what they said. It was very exciting, the feeling that I could rescue a

wonderful poem from oblivion.”

Meijer gained access to her sources through Vasalis’s three children. “They let me see everything, but I had to ensure that people’s privacy was respected. Vasalis was always very discreet thanks to her professional ethics, and she wouldn’t have wanted the privacy of others to be invaded on her account. Sometimes they were a little too strict about this for my liking, but they were consistent at least.

Luckily I’m not the sort of biographer who says: I’m the boss, just hand over the stuff and I’ll do what I want with it. That’s not my style. Not everything has to be said or written, as people seem to crave these days. That’s something I learned from this project.

Vasalis, who never sought publicity, had true foresight. She said: ‘If you’re in the public eye, you are not your own.

The most personal things I have to say can be found in my poetry.’ I think I’ve written a biography that won’t make Vasalis turn over in her grave.”

‘M. Vasalis. Een biografie’ is published by G.A. van Oorschot in Amsterdam.

Again it all begins to change, now once more I find enchantment in the slightest things, that leave no trace behind.

Once more these seem the only thing that are alive and all that’s simple, solid, mere décor, a floor, with real life flowing on above.

A golden hair, faltering on a dark-blue sleeve, a hieroglyph.

Traces of small birds’ footprints in the snow, An undertone of laughter in a voice…

Strange, that life should be coming back like this, back-to-front, in shadows, echoes, faintest print.

From: Vasalis. Fifteen of her poems with translation

by James Brockway, Avalon Press, MIM, 1999.

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Money laundering in real-estate sector can be detected systematically

Whether a particular property is being used to launder money can be deter-

mined by way of three indicators. The most important of these is a striking change in price. The other two indicators are a foreign owner, or a newly established company as owner. This according to research conducted by Professor Brigitte Unger and PhD candidate Joras Ferwerda from Utrecht University, in collaboration with Maastricht University criminologists Hans Nelen and Luuk Ritzen. The study was commissioned

jointly by the ministries of Finance, Justice and the Interior.

Earlier research by Unger identified the Netherlands as an attractive country for money launderers, thanks to its extensive financial system, open economy and the fact that criminals can quietly enjoy their illegally earned money here. In that study, Unger estimated the value of money laundering in the Netherlands at around € 18 billion.

Thousands of new knowledge jobs thanks to Limburg campus plan In a huge boost for the Dutch knowledge economy, Limburg is investing half a billion euros in the accelerated development of the Maastricht Health Campus and the Chemelot Campus in SittardGeleen. Over the next 10 years, these developments will give rise to 2100 new jobs for knowledge workers and many thousands more in indirect employment.

Given its aim of being a world leader in research, new materials and better health, Limburg has big ambitions for the two sites. The plans dovetail neatly

NWO

sends young Maastricht researcher abroad

Marieke Mur

26

with the government’s policy to put the South-East Netherlands on the map as ‘Brainport’. Together with Seaport (Rotterdam) and Mainport (Amsterdam), Brainport will be one of the key economic drivers in the Netherlands. A government study posits the Chemelot Campus as already being of national importance, and the Maastricht Health Campus as having similar potential.

The Limburg campuses are set to become major hubs for research, teaching and patient care as well as commercial

The Netherlands Organisation for Scientific Research (NWO) has awarded Rubicon grants to 29 promising young academics. A Rubicon grant allows Dutch researchers who have recently obtained their PhD to gain research experience abroad, and international researchers to conduct research in the Netherlands. One of these researchers is Marieke Mur of Maastricht University, who will be studying in the UK. Mur will

activity. This will pave the way for students, clinicians and researchers to start up their own businesses on the campuses, and for established entrepreneurs to expand their existing businesses. In this way, new findings can be transformed more quickly into commercial products. Also involved in the campus development are other vocational teaching and research institutions (MBO/HBO), as well as local councils (Sittard-Geleen, Maastricht and Heerlen) and the LIOF.

spend two years studying human perception at the MRC Cognition and Sciences Unit in Cambridge. Human perception is flexible, because we can categorise the same visual objects in different ways. The flexibility of perception is established by focusing on object properties that are relevant to the context. Mur will be studying the underlying brain mechanisms involved in this process.

Knowledge of tobacco damage is lowest among Dutch smokers Dutch smokers’ knowledge about the health damage caused by smoking and passive smoking lags well behind that in other countries, according to a report released today by the International Tobacco Control Policy Evaluation Project (ITC Project). This report is part of a series of publications stemming from the project, in which the Netherlands has participated for several years.

The survey shows that only 61% of Dutch smokers are aware of the damage caused by passive smoking. This knowledge is highest in Mauritius and France, reaching 96%. The Netherlands scores the lowest in this regard, well below the United States, where 80% of smokers are aware of the damage of passive smoking.

China is well known for not informing the public about the dangers of smoking. Yet even there, 68% of Chinese smokers say they know that passive smoking can cause lung cancer. The Netherlands ranks only slightly better with 70%, versus 94% of French and 79% of UK smokers.

The figures show the need to invest heavily in the knowledge of Dutch smokers. However, the current government recently decided that it no longer wishes to invest in mass media campaigns on smoking and health.

According to Marc Willemsen, professor of Tobacco Control Research and principal investigator in the ITC Netherlands

Project, “As knowledge increases, so will public support for effective measures to combat smoking, such as a smokefree hospitality sector. This is one of the reasons that the debate on the smoking ban still lingers here. In other countries people are already convinced of the damage caused by smoking and passive smoking, and the measures are well received.”

The report can be downloaded at www.itcproject.org

European Studies students scoop up awards at EuroSim 2011 The exceptionally high quality of Maastricht European Studies students and their capacity to perform well under pressure was demonstrated once again at the recent transatlantic EU simulation game, hosted this year by Widener University at its Chester campus near Philadelphia. The intensive four-day event is organised by the Trans-Atlantic Consortium for European Union Simulations and Studies (TACEUSS). Each year, it brings together around 200 students from 20 European and American higher education institutions.

This year’s negotiations concerned the EU’s regional funds policy, specifically the development and adoption of a

new regulation of the European Parliament and the Council laying down general provisions on the European Regional Development Fund, the European Social Fund and the Cohesion Fund.

The Maastricht student delegation was composed of three second-year students (Veronika Norvaišaite, Dominik Sipiński and Philipp Wittrock) and three third-year students (Franziska Koch, Katalina Praekelt and Simon Reetz).

In an unprecedented scoop, they managed to win an award in each category in which they were represented. There was a general agreement among the EuroSim participants (students and

staff alike) that Dominik Sipiński, who played the role of the Polish prime minister Donald Tusk, delivered by far the best performance at this year’s event.

The Maastricht team, with Dominik Sipiński at left

27

Cross-cultural intelligence

Cross-cultural intelligence: Doing business in a globalised world

By Jolien Linssen

What is the key to business success in a globalised world, where people from a variety of countries meet and mingle? Along with sufficient language skills, IQ, EQ and perhaps gut feeling, what we need is cross-cultural intelligence. This according to Noi Nantawan Kwanjai in her doctoral dissertation, ‘Cross-cultural intelligence amid intricate cultural webs – A tale of the UnDutchables in the land of 1001 smiles’.

If you think this sounds like the title of a novel, then meet Dr Kwanjai herself: a former freedom fighter and political prisoner from Thailand who lived in London, Hawaii and Singapore before marrying her Dutch husband and settling down in the Netherlands. “What I wanted to find out is what happens

28

when an employee has to operate in a foreign country, very different from his or her home country”, Kwanjai explains. This is a question that is deeply intertwined with her own experiences, given that she has been working abroad for most of her career. With her roots in Thailand and a Dutch

spouse at home, the decision to take a closer look at cross-cultural interactions by focusing on five Dutch firms in Thailand seemed only logical.

“I asked the Dutch employees about their experiences with Thai people and vice versa”, Kwanjai says, “and found a lot of commonalities. For the

Dutch it appears to be very hard to know how their Thai colleagues really feel, since they smile at everything and always say ‘yes’. Simultaneously, the Thais find the typical Dutch bluntness to be hurtful.

I myself needed to learn to deal with this”, she admits. “For example, my husband was bothered by the odour of the spicy food I eat and in fact told me that it smelled awful. I took it as a Thai and was very upset by this.”

Four modes of ‘cultural crossing’ Where cultures differ, they can clash – and in today’s multicultural society, we are only too aware of this fact.

According to Kwanjai, however, we have been focusing too much on this particular effect of cross-cultural interaction. Through observing and talking to both Dutch and Thai employees, she discovered more than the just opinions they hold about one another. At a deeper level, she found out that any cross-cultural interaction can take place in four distinct yet coexisting ways: the four modes of cultural crossing.

Besides the well-known clashing mode that leads to conflicts or fights, Kwanjai also identifies the reciprocal mode. “In certain business settings, it’s important for each culture to maintain its distinct characteristics. Think of a joint venture that needs to ensure that local knowledge and qualifications are present as well as international standards”, she says. “Yet sometimes a blend of cultures might be more favourable.

The result of this is a new, hybrid culture, as can be seen in mixed marriages like my own. This I call the mode of unification. And finally, there’s the mode of variation, in which adaptation to the other takes place without affecting one’s core.

One of the Dutch firms I visited seemed very Thai, in that the employees regarded one another and their boss as family members.

Yet it was a Dutch firm through and through, using the Thai sense of family to enforce Dutch discipline.”

er’s shoes. This is the hardest thing to learn and in my view it would require cross-cultural training.”

Cross-cultural intelligence When working together with people from different backgrounds, the trick is knowing what mode would be most suitable to further your interests.

Kwanjai: “You have to create the condition that makes the situation as effective as possible, which is something we unconsciously already do.”

This, indeed, is what cross-cultural intelligence is all about. The better you are at moving towards the best mode for your purpose, the more intelligent you are at a cross-cultural level.

The development of such training is in fact the next thing on Kwanjai’s to-do list. For those who are interested: registration would be open for anyone, not just for those in the business world. “One of the main findings of my study is that we in ourselves are a web of cultures. I define culture as a unique way of living shared by a group of people who have certain things in common.

Next to being a Thai with Dutch citizenship, I’m part of the School of Business and Economics at Maastricht University, and I’m female: I like to talk a lot, I’m emotional, caring and I like cooking.” On that note, it might be good to know that Kwanjai and her husband have solved the cooking issue, moving out of the clashing mode towards a more peaceful condition. Cross-cultural intelligence may also be the secret to a good marriage.

The good news is that cross-cultural intelligence is a social skill that can be trained. “Just like driving, it needs to be practised”, says Kwanjai. “The more you do it, the better you get at it. What it requires is an open mind, which is the ability to suspend yourself for a while and step into anoth-

Noi Nantawan Kwanjai

29

Off the job

Gerd Leers en Esther Crombag

“You always have to find new challenges,

but within the range of your possibilities”

By Margot Krijnen

Esther Crombag is a lecturer in Public Law at Maastricht University, a top-level tandem cyclist and a popular conference speaker. Recently, she also published her biography.

Crombag is blind.

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Biography Last spring, the Dutch Minister for Immigration Gerd Leers presented Crombag’s biography at a festive ceremony, where he spoke about her incredible drive: “Always with infinite, blind trust in the great future that would be hers, as long as she persevered.” She is just 34 years old – so why a biography at such a young age? “My friend and colleague Erik Knippenberg wanted to write my biography for years. In the summer of 2009 he suggested it again, and for the first time I thought ‘why not?’ I’d reached several milestones and was ready to speak about them. Also, at conferences my audiences have often suggested that I write an inspiring biography. The time was ripe for the story of my life.”

best friend on pink ‘ballerina’ stationery when I noticed I could no longer see the pink lines on the paper.

I left the caravan, stumbled off the steps and walked into tent posts. My parents realised something was seriously wrong and we drove home. In the car on the Route du Soleil there were moments when I didn’t know if it was day or night. My father got me to the hospital as quickly as he could. It turned out there was a cyst the size of an egg at the junction of the optic nerves. The cyst could be removed, but the surgery caused irreparable damage to both optic nerves.

For a week I lived between hope and fear until the specialists told me I would definitely be blind. It almost felt like a relief, because it ended the insecurity and I could start the process of acceptance.”

Turning blind When Esther was 11 years old, she went on holiday in France with her parents. “I was writing a letter to my

New life It was the beginning of a new life. The girl who had expected to return to her classmates after the summer

holidays had to start all over again. Crombag: “Suddenly, the world was dark and scary and I didn’t know what to trust anymore. I had to start from scratch. Where to begin? Which institutions to contact, which school to go to? It was almost too much to deal with. I went to the Institute for the Blind in Grave, where I learnt to read braille and walk with a stick. Everything I needed to function normally. I liked it in Grave because it felt safe and comfortable, but after one year my parents brought me back home. They felt that the longer I stayed there, the more difficult it would become to find my place in the world of the seeing.” Even as a child, Esther quickly saw that she had two options: she could either play the victim or search for possibilities within her limits. She finished secondary school, went to law school and graduated with honours.

accepted my blindness and learned to live with it.

But now that I was consciously and chronologically talking about my life, it all came back to me bit by bit. I realised what my sudden blindness had done to my family and me. Working on the book was tiring for me. After each session I had terrible headaches. But when the last chapter was completed, I felt that for the first time I had truly given my blindness a place in my life. It sounds like a cliché, but it was a therapeutic experience.”

Blind vertrouwen (‘Blind Trust’), Esther Crombag and Erik Knippenberg, Uitgeverij Gianni, ISBN-13: 978-90-77970-13-3

Daily practice So how does it work in practice, studying and teaching law? “All the literature is transferred into braille. I have a braille display that scans digital texts, including emails, reports and student papers, and transfers them into braille, one line after the other. But when I teach, it’s more practical to use books, so I get them from the braille library in Amsterdam.” Is it just a matter of having the right equipment, then? “No, when you’re blind, you have to be very organised and very social. Managing to graduate from law school as a blind person is not only an intellectual achievement.

It’s the result of good planning and thinking ahead.

And don’t forget all the help I got from others. Teachers, fellow students, parents, friends, everyone helped.

That and my enormous drive made it possible.”

Cycling And Crombag has not only succeeded academically; she is also involved in tandem cycling at the very top level. She has been the Dutch champion more than once and has participated in several World and European Championships. “I missed out on qualifying for the Beijing Paralympics in 2008 by 0.2 seconds, but I’ll try again for 2012 in London.” There are constant challenges, but always within her limits: “You always have to seek out new challenges in your life, but make sure they are reachable, or set intermediate goals to save you from great disappointments. And when you do face obstacles, deal with them. Find the strength to pick yourself up and start over.”

Esther with her brother before she became blind

Therapeutic With her biography, Esther hopes to inspire and motivate her readers. But it was also a personal victory.

“When we started writing this book, it brought back a lot of memories I’d suppressed. I thought I’d fully

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My focus on Europe

developed in Maastricht

By Graziella Runchina

She spent two years travelling the world as personal assistant (PA) to European Commissioner Neelie Kroes. Living out of a suitcase, working 60-hour weeks – but despite everything she still found time for love. “Right in the busiest time of my life, I met the man of my dreams”, says Kirsten Guyaux, back in Maastricht – the city where she studied International Economics at UM – on the eve of her wedding.

Sitting still is not for this 33-year-old, who is already on her sixth job after graduating in 2001. Nor is living in the same place for long. She does a quick stocktake: since her 18th birthday, she has packed her bags and moved on no less than 21 times. But the last few years have been a bit more settled; she has now found her home base in Brussels, where until last year she worked for Neelie Kroes. As PA, her tasks included external relations, for example with the Dutch media and contacts with the European Parliament.

Kirsten Guyaux en Neele Kroes

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Great love “Tough times” is how Guyaux describes those years. “And right in that busiest time of my life, I met my great love.” The French-speaking Belgian Tanguy Stuckens worked in the same building and was a PA himself, for the Belgian European Commissioner Louis Michel. “We understood each other because we both know this world from the inside out. We share our passion for Europe and politics, and understand when work duties come calling.” Now they live together in Waterloo, a town of 30,000 inhabitants just south of Brussels, where Stuckens is also a city councillor.

Inspirational When asked what she thought of the ‘grand old dame’ Neelie Kroes as a boss, Guyaux does not need to think long. “First and foremost, she’s very inspiring. She works extremely hard and asks the same of those around her. She has mountains of energy, never seems to get tired. And she’s also very nice to the people who work for her. I know that to the outside world she has the image of being a

tough nut. Perhaps that’s true in a sense. Her professionalism does indeed stand above all else. But at the same time she’s very much in touch with the people around her. Speaking for myself, I can only conclude that Neelie got the utmost out of me in the two years that I worked for her.”

Dream job PA to Neelie Kroes: it seemed like a dream job to Guyaux in 2008, when she was working as a financial and economic policy officer for the VVD (the People’s Party for Freedom and Democracy) in the Dutch House of Representatives. “That was a great job that gave me the chance to explore many facets of myself, but I was concentrating mainly on Dutch politics. I realised then that I was really starting to miss the international environment and the European focus.”

New life When she then visited the European Parliament in Brussels together with the party, it brought new momentum to her life. “In the corridors I overheard that Neelie Kroes was urgently

Visit us at www.maastrichtuniversity.nl/alumni

Kirsten Guyaux in Brussel

looking for a new PA. It seemed like the perfect job for me. As soon as I got home I plucked up the courage and sent her my CV.” That’s when things really took off: Kroes invited her for an interview and asked her when she could start. And so it was.

“Barely a month after that first visit, I threw some clothes in a suitcase and went to Brussels to start a whole new life.” She stayed initially in the apartment of a friend from her student days. “There was no time to think about what I was starting. Certainly in those early days we took many and long trips. We had appointments all over the world. The long work weeks made it an exciting but also exhausting time. You live by someone else’s schedule and learn to put your own priorities aside. Now that I’ve been working since last year at the Brussels office of the employers’ organisation

VNO-NCW I’m in control of my own time again. And that feels great.”

As advocate of the Dutch business sector in Brussels, VNO-NCW aims to influence the European decisionmaking process. “We also have a voice in BUSINESS EUROPE, a cluster of European employers’ organisations from the various countries involved in different European issues.”

Great student city Even back in high school, Guyaux knew what she wanted to study.

“I wanted to do something international and I wanted to study economics. And preferably in a new city, because I wanted to see more of the world”, says the Groningen native.

“UM’s International Economics programme seemed like an obvious choice. I was also attracted by the fact that it was in English, which is something I definitely benefited from in

my later work. It also made the step to French smaller. That’s handy now in Brussels and in my relationship with a French-speaking Belgian!”

May 2011 will mark exactly 10 years since she graduated in Maastricht, Guyaux now realises. “After high school I chose Maastricht very consciously. I thought it was a great, cosy study city that I already knew thanks to family visits in the south. The main thing I learned during my studies was to think critically. Problem-Based Learning encourages you to formulate your own opinions from a young age. When I look back on it now, I think that my focus on Europe developed during my time in Maastricht.

That in combination with further studies in Paris and Bruges brought me to where I am today. In Brussels, which for me is really the heart of Europe, I feel very much at home.”

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Farewell of Ine Kuppen and Jeroen van den Biggelaar

“You do the alumni”

By Jules Coenegracht

Maastricht University (UM) alumni can be found all over the world. They go places: from Amsterdam to Istanbul, from the United Arab Emirates to China. But this thriving alumni community only took shape 10 years ago, thanks to an off-hand remark by former Executive Board president Karl Dittrich. Read on for the key to a good alumni policy. And other things, like the question: when did Ine Kuppen start working for UM? “On 1 January 1974”, says Kuppen.

“Pardon?”

“I started working at Maastricht University on 1 January 1974.”

“But the university was only founded on 9 January 1976!”

“Officially, yes. But unofficially the medical faculty opened in 1974. We couldn’t even call the 50 students who started in that year ‘students’; we had to call them ‘participants’, because we didn’t yet have the approval to start. They, by the way, were 50 very motivated participants, because they took a big risk choosing us at that time. We greeted them with the harmony De Ster der Toekomst (‘Star of the Future’) and held a procession through Maastricht.

We even had drinks together after every course – the lecturers, staff and participants.”

Ine Kuppen en Jeroen van den Biggelaar.

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007 Kuppen, also known as ‘the mother of the alumni’, will retire from UM on 1 July. Back in 1974, she was the seventh employee of the then only semi-legal medical faculty. “They used to call me 007.” Also taking his

leave is Jeroen van den Biggelaar, who for 20 years has represented the alumni on the board of the University Fund Limburg/SWOL. Some 10 years ago now, he worked closely with Kuppen in setting up the first alumni circles. Before that time there was no real alumni policy, in any active sense of the term. Kuppen: “The university just let them go. I thought that was very unfortunate.” At some point the then Executive Board president, Karl Dittrich, said to Kuppen in pure Maastricht dialect: “Gaank diech de alumni mer doen” – you do the alumni. And so she did.

Merger Van den Biggelaar, a former member of the University Council, is now international expansion and real estate manager at Hunkemöller.

He studied law at UM before becoming the alumni representative on the board of the University Fund, whose origins go back even further than Kuppen’s first appearance at the university. “It’s basically a pot of money that was brought together in 1966 when there was nothing but – and

Visit us at www.maastrichtuniversity.nl/alumni

First alumni circle meeting in Amsterdam in 2002 welcomed by Job Cohen, then mayor of Amsterdam and former Rector Magnificus of UM

this has always stayed with me – a sign in a field with the words: ‘Hier komt de universiteit’ (‘UM building site’)”, says Van den Biggelaar. “Money was then collected on a structural basis through the people of Limburg, because they were so proud of ‘our university’.

And this pot of money has long been managed very soundly and well.” It is used to fund special chairs, student scholarships, promising research projects and other initiatives. So what was behind the recent merger of the University Fund and the Development and Alumni Relations Office?

“Professionalisation”, he replies.

“The new University Fund also now has its own director, Jos Kievits.”

Key “This professionalisation”, Kuppen says, “reflects the importance that the Execute Board attaches to the alumni policy.” And it is important

– on this, Kuppen and Van den Biggelaar agree wholeheartedly. “They’re the ambassadors of the university.”

“They have knowledge you can use.”

“They can help to recruit new students.” “They can give feedback on our education.” “They can be involved in post-graduate education.”

“They form a network that can help when graduates are looking for a job, for example, or when we need to raise funds.”

Question: if the alumni policy is to get a boost in terms of professionalisation, can Kuppen and Van den Biggelaar leave us with any tips for how best to approach this? They certainly can. Van den Biggelaar: “The key is: make sure you have a good alumni database.” Kuppen: “That’s your basis; that has to be good. The file that we use was set up over a weekend in 2001. Now it’s got 38,000 names!” Van den Biggelaar: “It’s your

core business; it contains everything you know. And you shouldn’t only have the right names and addresses, but also know what your alumni are doing now, where they work, in which organisation, at what level.”

There’s a certain passion to the pair when they talk about this subject.

Which is understandable, given that the project set up to professionalise this off-the-cuff database and embed it in the SAP business software has now been going on for more than five years. “We do hope that that will be sorted out quickly.”

And they have one final tip. Professionalisation of the alumni policy is important, to be sure. But, says Van den Biggelaar, “You also have to retain the human side. Ine was always the face of the initiative. People need to know: if I want to know something about the alumni policy, I can go to that person. That’s just so important.”

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University Fund

A named foundation

alive with music

By Ratna Adam

Ans Samama (86) lives and breathes music. The daughter of a piano-playing philosophy professor,

she married an impresario and even today still plays the cello. Her true mark on the world of music,

however, has come from coaching musicians struggling with an injury. Samama developed her own treatment, a form of Mensendieck-style remedial therapy, which has proven highly successful.

To investigate the scientific value of her method, she co-founded the Ans Samama Fund together with Maastricht University (UM).

“Without music around me I don’t feel good. It’s my life”, says Samama. She may be 86, but that makes her no less passionate or ambitious. Even today, she trains musicians to correct their postures. Her work is important, not just for herself but also for others.

“Around 70% of orchestra musicians have physical complaints. And that’s just unnecessary”, she stresses. She fails to understand why musicians pay so little attention to the position of their body in relation to their instrument, and to the use of their muscles.

“Musicians are very difficult people.

Perfectionists. And as a result they often unnecessarily overexert their muscles.”

Optimal play This has to change, Samama believes.

“As a remedial therapist, I know the human body and the muscles through and through. But I also understand the techniques of all sorts of instruments, so I can see immediately when someone’s making a wrong movement and thus not playing as well as possible.”

Over 80% of her patients find that their physical complaints are reduced

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after her treatment. “Musicians aren’t used to working preventively. I’d like to wake them up and start teaching them very young to get to know and feel the movements of their bodies.”

Samama began researching her method over ten years ago, together with rehabilitation specialist Dr Marjon van Eijsden from UM’s Musicians Clinic.

The focus at that time was on RSI treatment and prevention in people who do a great deal of computer work; time constraints stopped them from getting around to the original target group, musicians. But the RSI study showed positive results, and Samama got a taste of success. “Marjon and I agreed we should carry on with the work.” Via Van Eijsden she got in touch with Rob de Bie, professor of Research in Physiotherapy, and Rob Smeets, professor of Rehabilitation Medicine.

This resulted in a donation to the University Fund, which in turn gave rise to the Ans Samama Fund.

Scientific research Since 2010, the Limburg University Fund/SWOL has been using the ‘named

Ans Samama at work

foundation’ setup as a fundraising instrument. Recognised as an ‘institution for general benefit’ (ANBI) and thus an official charity by the Dutch tax authorities, the University Fund offers private benefactors the opportunity to set up a personal fund or foundation under its auspices.

This allows the donor, by way of an advisory committee, to stay involved in directing the money.

For the next three years, Samama will donate a legacy of € 50,000 to the university. Vera Baadjou of the Rehabilitation Medicine research group will use this money over the next five to seven years to study the scientific value of Samama’s treatment method. For instance, a group of conservatory students treated

according to Samama’s method will be compared with a control group that receives no treatment.

Ans Samama

“With this research we’re aiming to demonstrate in a scientific manner that my method is not only a proven way of training musicians, but also that, especially in the music world, it should be taught during their studies”, says Samama. “Students need to learn how their bodies work and how they can use them effectively. Keep in mind that a large proportion of students go on to become teachers, and as such can pass on this knowledge in turn.”

Maastricht University Dinner On 7 April, under the auspices of the University Fund Limburg/SWOL, the fifth Maastricht University Dinner took place in the banquet hall of the provincial government building in Maastricht. This event is organised annually with the aim ‘friendraising’ as well as fundraising for the university. This year’s theme: ‘Never waste a good crisis’. Guest speaker Herman van Rompuy, president of the European Council, treated the 200 guests from the business sector, academia, government and alumni to a passionate speech on the future of Europe.

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Legal Information Point on A2 Maastricht launched In 2011, the advance works for the A2 Maastricht motorway will commence.

According to the tight schedule, by the end of 2016 traffic from the A2 will no longer run through the Maastricht city centre, but rather under it. The construction of the motorway will involve a meticulous, multi-year option in an urban area, whose residents may be inconvenienced or even incur damages.

The A2 Buurtenplatform, a platform of

Albert Scherpbier

Sex

and seniors Where did the idea originate that lust and passion are only for the young, and that age involves not just shortcomings but also moderation? The book Seksualiteit van ouderen, een multidisciplinaire benadering (The sexuality of seniors: A multidisciplinary approach), published and edited by Aagje Swinnen, describes the influence of the physical ageing process on the sexual needs and activities

38

involved neighbourhoods, has consistently urged for independent legal advice for civilians. To cater for this need, third-year students from Maastricht University’s Faculty of Law launched the UM Legal Information Point on 1 April. The official opening was conducted by Mr Prompers,

director of Projectbureau A2 Maastricht, and Professor Heringa, PhD, dean of the Faculty of Law.

Louis Prompers, Aalt Willem Heringa and Ad Lutters

Albert Scherpbier appointed as Dean FHML The Executive Board has appointed Prof. Dr. Albert Scherpbier (1954) as Dean of the Faculty of Health, Medicine and Life Science (FHML) and as Vice Chairman of the Board of MUMC+.

The appointment is effective as of 1 May 2011 initially for a period of one

year. Albert Scherpbier is professor of Quality Improvement in Medical Education and currently scientific director of the Education Institute of FHML. Since 2009, he is also the faculty Dean of Education for FHML.

of older men and women. It considers notions about the sexual conduct of elderly people and examines the diversity of sexual experiences among this growing population group. To this end, the authors consider examples from advertising, literature and art, with the aim of shedding better light on the shifts in sexuality’s representation and perception. Leading scientists and writers from Flanders and the Netherlands have collaborated on the book, such as Marleen Temmerman, Bo Coolsaet, Jacques van Lankveld, Wanda Reisel and Anneke Smelik.

Aagje Swinnen is an NWO Veni laureate and lecturer at Maastricht University’s Centre for Gender and Diversity.

Profile

Colophon

Education and research at Maastricht

• Maastricht Graduate School of Law

Publisher: Maastricht University

University is organised primarily on the

• Montesquieu Institute Maastricht

Editor-in-Chief: Jeanine Gregersen

basis of faculties, schools and institutes.

Faculty of Psychology and

Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences

Neuroscience

• Politics and Culture in Europe

• Graduate School of Cognitive and

• Science, Technology and Society • Science and Culture Faculty of Health, Medicine and Life Sciences • School for Nutrition, Toxicology and Metabolism (NUTRIM) • School for Cardiovascular Diseases (CARIM) • School for Public Health and Primary Care (CAPHRI) • School for Mental Health and Neuroscience (MHeNS) • School for Oncology and Developmental Biology (GROW) • School of Health Professions Education (SHE) Faculty of Humanities and Sciences • Department of Knowledge Engineering • International Centre for Integrated assessment and Sustainable development (ICIS) • Maastricht Graduate School of Governance (MGSoG) • University College Maastricht • Teachers Academy • Architecture • Maastricht Science College Faculty of Law • Institute for Globalisation and International Regulation (IGIR) • Institute for Transnational Legal Research (METRO) • Institute for Corporate Law, Governance and Innovation Policies (ICGI) • Maastricht Centre for Human Rights • Maastricht European Private Law Institute (MEPLI) • The Maastricht Forensic Institute (tMFI)

Clinical Neuroscience • Clinical Psychological Science • Cognitive Neuroscience (CN) • Experimental Psychopathology (EPP) • Neuropsychology & Psychopharmacology • Work & Social Psychology • Maastricht Brain Imaging Centre (M-BIC)

General Editor: Annelotte Huiskes Editorial Board: Gerard Mols (President), Marja van Dieijen-Visser, Aalt-Willem Heringa, Harm Hospers, Bernadette Jansma, Jos Kievits, Annemie Schols, Sophie Vanhoonacker, Ann Vanstraelen Texts: Ratna Adam, Jules Coenegracht, Jos Cortenraad, Annelotte Huiskes, Femke Kools, Margot Krijnen, Loek Kusiak, Jolien Linssen, Graziella Runchina, Isabel de Sousa Photography: Chantal Ariëns (p 2), Esther Crombag (p 31), Dreamstime (p 27), Philip Driessen (p 37), Herco Fonteijn (p 20 and 21),

School of Business and Economics

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