We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, then, is not an act, but a habit

Transcription

1 1 Speech at the opening of the 2015/2016 academic year of the Eindhoven University of Technology. August 31, 2015, 16:00, Blauwe zaal. Frank Baaijens, Rector, TU/e We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, then, is not an act, but a habit How better to capture the essence of TU/excellence, than with this quote of Aristotle? Ladies and gents, students and colleagues, state secretary, mayor of Bois le Duc ( s-hertogenbosch): welcome to this new academic year at our university. It s exciting to be able to greet so many of you. Around 2,000 freshmen, or freshers, are joining us today. That s a record for this university. What a great start to the new academic year! Our community is clearly thriving. This is the first time I m opening the academic year as a rector, and to be able to stand here, in front of such a talented, enthusiastic and growing community, is really special to me.

2 2 It s also great that our community is becoming more international. The number of foreign students is up (or: is now very high). Last year we had 467 new students from abroad. This year we re welcoming a quarter more! We re absolutely delighted and proud that so many have chosen our university for their academic education. Our community keeps growing, and that poses whole new challenges. What do we need to do so that all 2,000 freshers excel? And, indeed, all 10,000 or so students? And indeed our whole scientific community? Bearing in mind Ajax is even struggling to make their eleven players excel ( or PSV for that matter). So how on earth can we get the best out of all those thousands of students, and how do we enable our scientists and staff to excel in their disciplines? I d like to thank the student organizing committee who dreamt (pronounce dremt ) up this great theme, because excellence really is the challenge we face.

3 3 Who better to talk about excellence than Sander Dekker, State Secretary of Education, Culture and Science? Sander, we really appreciate your coming. In the past three years you ve done a lot to promote and support excellence at Dutch universities. It s great that we can hear something from you today concerning what road you see before us. TU/excellence. The slogan our students proposed. It reflects our ambition to excel in education and research. What does that mean for you? To answer this question, I will discuss three statements.

4 4 First statement: Agility, not rigidity I think it is very exciting to be in engineering today. Technology is everywhere. Technology will continue to affect everyday life in inconceivable ways. Just imagine life without medical technology. Or without the internet. Or without a smart phone. New technologies and new companies emerge each year, and some of them will have a huge impact on everyday life. More than ever before, engineers play a decisive role in these companies. But in order to be successful, everything needs to be right. Companies need to excel in every aspect. Not just technology. Technology, marketing, logistics, design, customer support, you name it it all has to interact seamlessly. This means that engineers will need to shine in their specific discipline. Engineers must have world-class in-depth know-how. And, increasingly, engineers have to interact with other disciplines, to work as a team.

5 5 This is why we have fundamentally changed our educational model, and have created so many educational options for our student. This is why we have established the Bachelor College three years ago. And this is why we launch our new graduate program, and Graduate school, today. It s been quite a challenge to prepare the new graduate program. This is the fourth summer in a row that a lot of faculty have prepared new courses. Jan Fransoo, Dean of the Graduate School, and many, many others, have worked very hard to get the new program up and running. All subjects have been re-engineered, an extraordinary achievement. I wish to thank all those who have invested their creativity and time to ensure that we could start with the Graduate School today. We ve set all the elements in place. Now it is up to our master students to shape their own future.

6 6 Second statement: Inspiration before transpiration We are convinced that intertwining of education and research is crucial to achieve excellence in engineering education. Direct contact between scientists and students is right at the core of our educational philosophy. Scientists who are at the forefront in their fields make the best teachers. Their passion, love and enthusiasm enables them to teach others what it takes to go beyond what is known, and to actually demonstrate it. Put more bluntly, excellent research is a pre-requisite for excellent education. The government will gradually make extra funds available for more teachers at universities. Apparently education and research have gradually drifted apart in some universities. But this is not how we see our road to excellence before us. Technology is hands on. We don t think teachers who only teach can easily go beyond their subject knowledge. That s why, as a university, we invest in scientists who embrace the importance of teaching. Scientist-teachers.

7 7 They teach in small groups, with a lot of exchange; they share their experience and enthusiasm in hands-on labs with students; that s how you, as students, learn to push boundaries; how you learn to innovate, and to cope with uncertainty and your own limitations; how you get acquainted with state-of-theart equipment; how you learn to see structure in a complex environment. This is also the way to learn to cooperate. All in all, it s so much easier to work hard when you are inspired.

8 8 Third statement: excellence before growth. A few years ago we had about 7,000 students. This has grown to 10,000 students today, and it has been estimated that our university may grow well beyond 12,000 students in a few years time. Our educational model, consisting of working groups and intensive, interactive lectures, is not easily scalable. Accommodating more students is for us not just a matter of teaching in bigger halls. We would also need to draw in extra scientist-teachers from somewhere. Despite the growth in student numbers, and extreme competition for research funding, our scientists have been able to maintain a high funding level for their research. We are among the top performers in the European H2020 program, and IMPULS program, stimulating public-private collaboration, is a success. That is all fantastic.

9 9 But, our scientists have an extremely high workload. Many work hours a week. To maintain the quality of our education and research at such a growth in student numbers, paired with an intense competition for research funding, we ll need a significant increase of our scientific staff. However, the current financial metrics for universities inhibits the necessary scaling. Our answer to this? I see three directions ( And this is also my advice to Ajax ): First, pair individual talent with the power of team-play. This increases our competitiveness. Because what applies to our students also applies to scientists. A team can compete globally. A team performs in ways that can t be achieved when you remain alone. A team makes you excel. While in cycling an individual wins the Tour the France, the Champions League is won by the best team.

10 10 Team-play is the most defining characteristic of this university. It suits our culture, and it suits the engineering profession. After all, a device, a building, an experiment, or a computer program, is designed by a team, often bringing together different disciplines. Second, we must and will invest in talent. As a consequence of the increasing number of students our annual budget will grow by million euros in the years to come. This may seem like a lot, but is by far not enough to accommodate our growth. This additional budget will be allocated to the departments, not to services. The departments in turn have the responsibility to invest in new scientist-teachers, not services. Finally, we put excellence before further growth in student numbers. Without additional investments, we cannot grow without sacrificing quality. A further growth in student numbers would put huge pressure on our research, resulting in a drop in research performance. This would inevitably have a negative impact on our ambition to excel in education as well.

11 11 Dear Colleagues and Students, our university is thriving. The Keuzegids Masters the Dutch guide to masters courses has rated us the best engineering university for five years in a row. According to the Shanghai ranking we are sixth in engineering in Europe, reflecting our excellence in research. Worldwide our university is second to none in terms of publicprivate collaboration. And of course, the number of students is rising. Yet, we can do better. Our ambition is to play in the Champions League of Science and Technology. To achieve this ambition, and to accommodate our growth, substantial additional public investments in our university are mandatory. I believe this is justified even more in view of a surprising paradox: Although our region has the highest private investments in research and development in the country, the public investments in research and education in our region are among the lowest in the country.

12 12 In summery, our university is thriving. But we have come up against the limits of our success. Just imagine what great things we could do if the public investments would match the private investments.

13 13 Dear colleagues and students I will finish with three announcements. I am pleased to be able to make this announcement today doing so simultaneously with Marjan Oudeman, President of Utrecht University who will be making the same announcement this afternoon at the start of their academic year. Utrecht and Eindhoven will strengthen and expand their strategic alliance. We aim to develop two internationally leading research institutes, both based on existing long-term collaboration. One on ChemEnergy and one on Regenerative Medicine. We are also going to step up our efforts to stimulate and facilitate Eindhoven students to do part of their education at Utrecht University, and vice versa. Second, assuming that all formalities will be passed, I am pleased to announce that a great collaboration with Tilburg University, the municipality of s-hertogenbosch and the Province Noord Brabant is now taking shape. The Grand Initiative Data Sciences is an excellent example of interfaculty, interuniversity and regional cooperation which brings together governments, knowledge institutions and business. It has international outreach.

14 14 Finally, I am pleased to inform you today, again doing so simultaneously with Marjan Oudeman in Utrecht, and next week also by Louise O. Fresco, president of Wageningen UR, that Utrecht, Eindhoven and Wageningen have the intention to join forces. The TU/e technological expertise, combined with the know-how of Wageningen on healthy food and environment, and the expertise of Utrecht on life sciences and sustainability, creates a wealth of opportunities for our university. This is great news. It extends the scope of our research. It also adds a myriad of choices for our students, faculty and staff providing even more opportunities to excel. I have yet more news to share with you. During this academic year, TU/e will be celebrating its sixtieth anniversary. We ll be holding the Dream and Dare Festival, a three-day celebration in April, at which we ll be showcasing our education and our three strategic areas of research energy, health and smart mobility. And of course we re going to have a lot of fun! The celebration year is officially going to start in January. So be prepared. This isn t just going to be a year of celebrations. Quite the contrary. Excellence is not a given. It s hard work.

15 15 Just imagine how much effort Daphne Schippers has to invest to gain a few hundreds of a second on the 100 m, and win gold at the Olympics. Meanwhile for you our students there are all sorts of opportunities. We have honors classes for talented students, and I d also like to plug the studium generale which yet again has an exciting program this year. We also encourage you to be actively involved in the thriving TU/e community. We value our open, informal and caring community. Because we believe that when we are personal, passionate, curious and connected, our community is the place where innovation truly starts. So see for yourself! Go and listen, go and work together. It will be up to each of you to reach for excellence. We will do everything we can to assist you. We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, then, is not an act, but a habit

16 16 Let s fall into a habit, and make this an excellent year together. Thank you. ////