Pauline van der Meer Mohr

Usually, I refrain from commenting on Erasmus Magazine, as it would be inappropriate for me to influence or thwart in any way its freedom of press and its autonomy. I consider us, members of the EUR community, lucky to have an internal magazine of this calibre. Many universities have fought domestic wars over editorial content. [...]

Here’s another way of looking at ambitions to join the European top league of universities. In the Netherlands, we have embraced the vision of becoming one of the top 5 ‘knowledge economies’ of the world. The Danish government wants one of the country’s universities to be ranked among the top 10 in Europe by 2020. [...]

Among the many topics discussed this year with the University Council, none appeared more volatile than the topic of study space on campus. It is clear to all that currently, we do not have enough quiet spaces for all those students in search of a spot to work in peace. On Sundays, I have noticed [...]

After 3,5 years as Dean of the Rotterdam School of Management, George Yip is stepping down and the CvB and Deans bid him farewell yesterday during our annual strategy offsite meeting. The trip took us to Essen, Duisburg and Dusseldorf (dinner only). We visited the university of Duisburg-Essen to learn from their recent merger and [...]

Social media! Who doesn’t use it nowadays? Companies use twitter, facebook, hyves and blogs as substitutes for their ‘corporate Pravda’, as ways to disseminate information into the world. Such indoctrination is of course alien to this blog, where I attempt to share petite stories categorized as ‘a day in the life of….’. And yet, universities [...]

Every year or so, the ABD department collectively lets its hair down in the annual departmental outing. Always a big surprise, organised by enthousiastic volunteers, you never know whether they will take you salsa dancing or otherwise. This year’s theme was a healthy mind in a healthy body. Hence a combination of education (a visit [...]

I have blogged before about my fascination with the concept of servant leadership. I don’t want to be messianic about it, it’s just a notion of leadership that has inspired me for a long time. Recently I read something about IBM preparing for its centennial celebration that struck me as very interesting: “The IBM Centennial [...]

News from our ICT colleagues: soon, you will be able to study ‘Any Time, Any Place, Any Device’. This is what they tell me (in Dutch….!) “Het huidige concept van ICT-werkplekken binnen de EUR is toe aan verbetering. Nu is de ICT-werkplek binnen de EUR nog faculteitsgebonden. Straks maakt het niet meer uit binnen welk [...]

Tomorrow, Erasmus university will host the first international conference on science Marketing, discussing “strategies for managers of science and technology to effectively serve its end users.” A timely conference where best practices will be shared on how to ‘sell’ science science successfully to the public, politics and business. This topic is also on the to [...]