24. International
text & photography Malini Witlox
A lot of stress
My boyfriend claims I am a natural in Drama Studies
at T-Challenge Ever heard of the T-Challenge? In five days, five Tilburg students take on a business case for a local organization. Univers tagged along to see what these brave students encountered.
T
his year, the T-challenge focuses on the Onderwijsgroep Tilburg, known for the vocational training institutes (ROCs) in Tilburg. The assignment: find out what the common core values are within the Onderwijsgroep, in order to firmly embed them in the organisation.
Column
Is it Art or is it Science?
Monday 23 January, 10.30 am
My Liberal Arts and Sciences graduation day is in a few months time, but my friends and family still haven’t got a clue what I study. I don’t blame them. My identity and selfdefinition suffer greatly from the ambiguity of my program’s name. Although I study Arts and Sciences, it makes me neither an artist nor a scientist. The name derived from an education in the glamorous classical antiquity, but nobody except Liberal Arts students is aware of this. Fortunately, throughout the years I have developed a reservoir of useful explanations. I tell my father, a lawyer, that I study Roman law alongside a combination of modern European legislation. I have a feeling that this answer does not entirely satisfy him, because he still shrugs his shoulders and says: “It’s just strange, that’s all”. I had to disillusion my mother by telling her that obtaining a Bachelor of Arts diploma will not put me in a position to compete with Picasso. Although I do tell her that I learn other artistic skills, such as storytelling and the art of persuasion. My boyfriend knows what I’m studying, although he claims I am a natural in Drama Studies. I could pass a living example of one. The version for my grandmother’s friends varies from “Communication studies” to “Architecture”. They can’t remember what I said during the last tea party, anyway. I tell strangers that my specialization is in the History of Euro pean Witchcraft and the Ontology of the Supernatural. I’m probably the most intriguing person they ever met on a bus. I appeal to all of you, dear Liberal Artists and Scientists! Let’s change the name of our program to something less puzzling and more clarifying. I’d suggest: Liberal Arts That Has Nothing to Do with Arts but More with Broadly Understood Cultural Studies, Although It Is In Fact Quite Liberal. Sonia Kolasinska is a third-year Liberal Arts student.
Univers 9 februari 2012
Lianne Groot, a 4th year Psychology student, is proposing her plan to the rest of the team. “We should ask the teachers how they feel about the current climate – the way it affects students as well as management. What is most important to them in their day-to-day conduct at work?”, she asks her teammates. Her fellow student Ian Mouser (3th year Business Economics/Accounting) adds: “The question is then of course, does whatever the teachers feel is important, correspond to the values of their management and their co-workers.” The two students are accompanied by Merle Heuvels (4th year International Business), Milou Pulles (5th year Supply Chain Management) and Eefje Wielders (Master student Management of Cultural Diversity). Together, they are about to dive head-first into their case study. Even if you have been given a couple of months, it can be difficult to properly describe the values which are established within any organization, but these five students have to present their results within a week. Time is of the essence. So Ian is checking his watch continuously.
“We have only 20 minutes before we have to present our plan of action. We have to hurry.” A schedule for the entire week lies on the table. Each day, the students start their day with a working breakfast at 8 am sharp and won’t leave their office any earlier than 10 pm. Precisely one hour and 45 minutes later, the students have finished their plan of action. In pairs, they will be interviewing principals and teachers. The evenings are spent on researching scientific literature. They’ve finished just in time: promptly at 12 am the representatives of the Onderwijsgroep enter the conference room. The plan of action goes down well with the audience. “Have you also taken the students into account?” one of them asks. Not yet, so the plan will be revised. And an additional problem: Both on Wednesday and Thursday, nearly all of management will on an away day. All in-depth interviews will have to be planned on Monday and take place on Tuesday and Wednesday. A week is simply not much time. Eventually, the final decision is made: about 18 employees will be subjected to an in-depth interview and a survey will be conducted among the remaining staff (over 2500 employees). But in that case, the students will have to obtain the email addresses of all employees. Milou goes over to the Personnel Manager’s office. “Not a problem,” she says immediately and starts ringing some people. Straight away, some data is extracted from a computer and emailed to Milou. Contentedly, she leaves. The surveys can be sent out.
International .25
Tuesday 24 January, 3 pm The students have come a long way in the intervening hours. The employee survey was sent in the morning. Within a few hours, 250 people had replied, which is a good score. Luckily, the data are processed ‘automatically’ by statistics program SPSS; it won’t have to be done by hand by the students themselves. “We are however still waiting for the student data,” Ian says. He is doing some literature research while Milou and Eefje are interviewing a teacher in the staff canteen. Not only have the students tallied up a lot of working hours, they have also notched up a lot of bicycling kilometres. As they are dealing with multiple branches, particularly Merle and Lianne are cycling all over the place. They have just come in are finally able take the weight of their feet while they sit behind their computers working out a teacher interview. When, at about ten to three, Milou and Eefje return from an interview, there’s no time for a break. Milou has to leave at once, together with Ian, for an interview with the director of the Building Trade School. It turns out to be a difficult interview. The director has only been in his current job for 24 days. Ian asks the questions, while Milou works out the answers on her laptop on the spot. Although the interviewee has only just been appointed director, he has been working for this ROC for some time. So, the students won’t settle for an abstruse answer. Especially Milou steadfastly continues to ask questions. She delves into the relationship between student and teacher for some time. After over an hour, they’ve finished all their questions. “That was such a tough interview”, she sighs in the hallway.
another interview. He hastily delegates to Eefje: “Could you please send out the student surveys, we’ll process the data on Thursday.”
Friday night, 9 pm The students have come to the end of what has been a very long week. Workdays from 8 am till 10 pm turned out to be not enough. Ian speaks of ‘lots of pressure’. Last night, we kept working until half past one. And today we started at 7 am.” The student survey, among other things, took up a lot of time. It was sent out to all student email addresses, but garnered hardly any response. “In the end, we decided to print out 175 surveys and went out to interview the students in person. The sample is therefore not representative. But it has resulted in obtaining a total of 192 replies. They will have to be processed all by hand.” At half past three, the research results (including recommendations) are presented by the T-Challengers to the Onderwijsgroep Board of Directors. Ian recounts afterwards: “When we wanted to print it out, something went wrong with the computer. We used a version without the final lay-out for the presentation. We will hand in a improved final version on Monday. However, the Board was very enthusiastic.” Which core values were found in the end? Back in 2007, their client had already formulated some. “We retracted the value of trust, which is seen by all employees as something that goes without saying. New core values such as openness, pride and engagement were a recurring theme in all interviews. Our research will soon be discussed in a meeting of the Board. I’m curious to see what will happen.”
When they’ve returned to their office, the student email addresses have just arrived. However, Ian quickly needs to leave for
Univers 9 februari 2012