Pauline van der Meer Mohr

Two headlines in today’s newspaper: the Royal wedding in the UK, and the unfortunate findings of the inspection of education with several applied sciences schools (HBO) in The Netherlands. No apparent link, of course, or it must be that there is much ado about…eh…. something. My colleague Bart Straatman has a television set in his [...]

Well, the cat is out of the bag with the selection – in principle – of Rotterdam as the intended location for the new Erasmus University College. This means that we will now enter into a phase of exclusive discussions with the City authorities with a view to conclude an agreement to house EUC (once [...]

One thing leads to another. When I first started blogging about diversity and inclusion in 2010, I received a suggestion to consider sexual orientation as well. It was the start of a trajectory that lead to the kick-off, last Thursday, of Erasmus Pride. This initiative unites, supports and informs colleagues and students of the GLBT [...]

Don’t know whether you recognise them, but these are the team members of the new EUREKA team: Fons, Erica, Rosanna, Victor, Jorrit, Ruben and Amanda. Together they not only feature on this festive ‘vlaai’ (cake) which they brought us today, but they will organise another unforgettable Eureka week in August. The team lifted a tip [...]

I received a letter today from a girl named Stephanie Mbida. She is 14 years old and she passed the first part of her SAT (university entrance exams) with a ‘nearly perfect score’ aged 11, one of the youngest persons in history. Since the age of 7, she wrote, she has been investing her ‘ability [...]

On the day we received the joyful news that the wretched “langstudeerdersboete” was postponed and the universities have been given a 1 year grace period from further cuts, Erasmus University announced an unprecedented measure to increase study success. From August 2011, all new BA students in FSW will be asked to study nominally, i.e. obtain [...]

Twenty students of RSM’s MScBA Entrepreneurship are engaged in a so-called Bootstrapping Elective. One of them came to see me the other day, carrying a red paperclip which he offered to trade for something else. His goal, he explained, was to “use this experiment as a means to meet interesting individuals from national and international [...]

Michael Braungart coined the Cradle to Cradle (C2C) concept and created a body of knowledge around it that is quickly changing the world. And what’s more, he holds a chair at Erasmus University. I became a fan of his work long before I was appointed here. And this week, I saw another example of the [...]

Congrats to the HOPE team for winning the prestigious Country of the Year award in Shanghai last week. The Global Entrepreneurship Week was selected among 100 competitors as the best initiative to stimulate entrepreneurship. Not only does Erasmus University stand out as supplier of top talent to multinationals (with shining example Frans van Houten’s appointment [...]