Talent is the fuel that powers the TU machine, but talented students are becoming harder to find. Next week’s ‘Talented Science’ symposium asks if the TU is doing enough to attract talented students, especially from minority groups.
/strong>
These are surely strange times for foreign students and staff contemplating a move to TU Delft. Open a newspaper anywhere from Peking to Kuala Lumpa and the news about Holland and Europe will probably be about extreme-rightwing politicians riding waves of anti-foreigner, anti-immigration, anti-integration sentiment into Parliament.
Not the best of times then for the TU to be trying to entice foreigners to these shores, but try it must, because the TU needs talented students and professors to remain competitive globally, and much of that talent will come from abroad. In fact it already is: the majority of TU PhD students are foreigners and the number of foreign professors at the TU is approaching the majority.
The TU and other Western universities have the cash, connections and research facilities, but their pools of homegrown scientific talent are drying up and competition among universities for foreign talent is getting fiercer. Hence, the TU’s ‘Talented Science’ symposium, a university-wide brainstorming session to come up with ways for the TU to attract, develop, and retain scientific talent.
The symposiums four workshops–Female Science; Young Science; Colored Science; and World Orientated Science–reflect the diversity that comes with Delft casting its net wider in search of new sources of talent. Women, people of color, gays, the handicapped…if they’re talented, the TU wants them. But is the university doing enough to make this a place where people of diverse backgrounds feel comfortable and can flourish professionally?
According to Jaap Willems, a policy advisor of the TU Human Resource Management department, if diversity is to flourish here, the TU must first create its own international culture, an internal ‘global culture of doing science’. The TU’s slogan, ‘The world as workplace’, begins at home. ”Foreign students who come to Delft are global citizens and they should feel they’re entering a global culture,” Willems says. ”TU faculties must now be prepared to serve a global student clientele.”
Colored Science
”Just because you speak English doesn’t mean you’re international,” says Geert-Jan van Reenen, one of the ‘Colored Science’ workshop’s guest speakers and a consultant with International Works, a company that helps corporations and organizations integrate foreigners. ”Your way of thinking is more important. Integration begins with the proper mindset. The Culture Science workshop will focus on preparing the TU mindset for effectively accepting foreigners.”
As increasing numbers of students from Africa, Asia and SouthAmerica come to study in Delft, Van Reenen says the TU needs to understand the students’ cultural backgrounds, because this is what determines how they’ll learn and think. For example, in the US, students work by trial and error; in Italy, they start with a theory and then experiment; in Indonesia, students are accustomed to being told what to do, rather than taking the initiative themselves. ”What all faculty staff members need to know is that accepting foreign students brings with it different responsibilities and challenges, and you must be able to adapt yourself to meet each student’s individual needs.”
Holland, Van Reenen adds, is not a particularly hospitable country and because, for example, it’s difficult to socialize with Dutch people after work, foreigners are often left feeling like lonely outsiders. TU Delft therefore must take a proactive approach. ”An International House on the TU campus would be a good idea,” he says. ”Foreigners could meet there to socialize and share their experiences of living in Holland.”
Female Science
Strolling across the TU campus, one thing is immediately apparent: Tall, skinny white guys outnumber women by at least five to one. But if TU Assistant Professor Zofia Verwater-Lukszo has her way, that will change. As guest speaker for the ‘Female Science’ workshop, she is charged with encouraging more Dutch women to study science and helping to attract more women to the TU by suggesting ways to make women feel more comfortable here.
Compared to other Western countries, Holland has a low percentage of women in science. Even Turkey – hardly a Mecca of Girl Power! female emancipation – has more women in science than Holland. And former Soviet-bloc countries, like Verwater-Lukszo’s native Poland, not only enjoy equal representation of women/men in science, but women are also university executive board members. Communism couldn’t offer women much in terms of nylons and cosmetics, but it did offer women equal career opportunities in science and technology, and that’s more than Calvin did for Dutch women. Verwater-Lukszo: ”Holland’s relative underdevelopment in terms of women in science goes back centuries; stemming from a male-dominated cultural mindset that deemed science to be a male profession.”
Although Verwater-Lukszo is trying to encourage more women to pursue scientific careers, she doesn’t support affirmative action or positive discrimination programs: ”Why treat women differently? There’s no difference between men and women. We’re scientists first and foremost.” She believes that making the TU a more women-friendly environment is one way to encourage women to stay on as PhDs, and, moreover, that women should be reassured that it is possible to be both a scientist and a mother: ”It doesn’t have to be one or the other. Female scientists can combine their roles, having three-dimensions in one person.”
Verwater-Lukszo has lived and worked in Holland for 17 years and says women are making slow but steady progress in scientific professions here. But does she think a woman will ever become TU President? ”Sure, why not, I’m an optimist and it’s certainly realistic. First, though, a woman should finally become a member ofthe TU Executive Board.”
The ‘Talented Science’ symposium is on Thursday June 6th, from 1-6pm, at the Aula. Admission is free and all students and staff are welcome to attend. For more information, go to www.platformdiversiteit.nl
TU now and in 2010
What will TU Delft be like in 2010? Will it be a dull institution infested with mediocre white guys, or a place where, for instance, a talented Afro-Caribbean, wheelchair-bound lesbian scientist would feel right at home? The TU’s Diversity Platform wants to know. Log on to their website, www.platformdiversiteit.nl and submit your vision of the ‘ideal TU Delft’. A compilation of these online opinions, entitled ‘TU Delft in 2010’, will be presented to the TU Executive Board in September. Here’s a selection of TU lowlights and highlights thus far:
TU Delft in 2002 is: not proud; gray (regarding age and homogeneity); international but provincial; quantity instead of quality; defensive instead of inspired.
TU Delft in 2010 is: a playground of creativity; exciting, dynamic; proud; selective; conscious that diversity is conducive for quality.
Talent is the fuel that powers the TU machine, but talented students are becoming harder to find. Next week’s ‘Talented Science’ symposium asks if the TU is doing enough to attract talented students, especially from minority groups.
These are surely strange times for foreign students and staff contemplating a move to TU Delft. Open a newspaper anywhere from Peking to Kuala Lumpa and the news about Holland and Europe will probably be about extreme-rightwing politicians riding waves of anti-foreigner, anti-immigration, anti-integration sentiment into Parliament.
Not the best of times then for the TU to be trying to entice foreigners to these shores, but try it must, because the TU needs talented students and professors to remain competitive globally, and much of that talent will come from abroad. In fact it already is: the majority of TU PhD students are foreigners and the number of foreign professors at the TU is approaching the majority.
The TU and other Western universities have the cash, connections and research facilities, but their pools of homegrown scientific talent are drying up and competition among universities for foreign talent is getting fiercer. Hence, the TU’s ‘Talented Science’ symposium, a university-wide brainstorming session to come up with ways for the TU to attract, develop, and retain scientific talent.
The symposiums four workshops–Female Science; Young Science; Colored Science; and World Orientated Science–reflect the diversity that comes with Delft casting its net wider in search of new sources of talent. Women, people of color, gays, the handicapped…if they’re talented, the TU wants them. But is the university doing enough to make this a place where people of diverse backgrounds feel comfortable and can flourish professionally?
According to Jaap Willems, a policy advisor of the TU Human Resource Management department, if diversity is to flourish here, the TU must first create its own international culture, an internal ‘global culture of doing science’. The TU’s slogan, ‘The world as workplace’, begins at home. ”Foreign students who come to Delft are global citizens and they should feel they’re entering a global culture,” Willems says. ”TU faculties must now be prepared to serve a global student clientele.”
Colored Science
”Just because you speak English doesn’t mean you’re international,” says Geert-Jan van Reenen, one of the ‘Colored Science’ workshop’s guest speakers and a consultant with International Works, a company that helps corporations and organizations integrate foreigners. ”Your way of thinking is more important. Integration begins with the proper mindset. The Culture Science workshop will focus on preparing the TU mindset for effectively accepting foreigners.”
As increasing numbers of students from Africa, Asia and SouthAmerica come to study in Delft, Van Reenen says the TU needs to understand the students’ cultural backgrounds, because this is what determines how they’ll learn and think. For example, in the US, students work by trial and error; in Italy, they start with a theory and then experiment; in Indonesia, students are accustomed to being told what to do, rather than taking the initiative themselves. ”What all faculty staff members need to know is that accepting foreign students brings with it different responsibilities and challenges, and you must be able to adapt yourself to meet each student’s individual needs.”
Holland, Van Reenen adds, is not a particularly hospitable country and because, for example, it’s difficult to socialize with Dutch people after work, foreigners are often left feeling like lonely outsiders. TU Delft therefore must take a proactive approach. ”An International House on the TU campus would be a good idea,” he says. ”Foreigners could meet there to socialize and share their experiences of living in Holland.”
Female Science
Strolling across the TU campus, one thing is immediately apparent: Tall, skinny white guys outnumber women by at least five to one. But if TU Assistant Professor Zofia Verwater-Lukszo has her way, that will change. As guest speaker for the ‘Female Science’ workshop, she is charged with encouraging more Dutch women to study science and helping to attract more women to the TU by suggesting ways to make women feel more comfortable here.
Compared to other Western countries, Holland has a low percentage of women in science. Even Turkey – hardly a Mecca of Girl Power! female emancipation – has more women in science than Holland. And former Soviet-bloc countries, like Verwater-Lukszo’s native Poland, not only enjoy equal representation of women/men in science, but women are also university executive board members. Communism couldn’t offer women much in terms of nylons and cosmetics, but it did offer women equal career opportunities in science and technology, and that’s more than Calvin did for Dutch women. Verwater-Lukszo: ”Holland’s relative underdevelopment in terms of women in science goes back centuries; stemming from a male-dominated cultural mindset that deemed science to be a male profession.”
Although Verwater-Lukszo is trying to encourage more women to pursue scientific careers, she doesn’t support affirmative action or positive discrimination programs: ”Why treat women differently? There’s no difference between men and women. We’re scientists first and foremost.” She believes that making the TU a more women-friendly environment is one way to encourage women to stay on as PhDs, and, moreover, that women should be reassured that it is possible to be both a scientist and a mother: ”It doesn’t have to be one or the other. Female scientists can combine their roles, having three-dimensions in one person.”
Verwater-Lukszo has lived and worked in Holland for 17 years and says women are making slow but steady progress in scientific professions here. But does she think a woman will ever become TU President? ”Sure, why not, I’m an optimist and it’s certainly realistic. First, though, a woman should finally become a member ofthe TU Executive Board.”
The ‘Talented Science’ symposium is on Thursday June 6th, from 1-6pm, at the Aula. Admission is free and all students and staff are welcome to attend. For more information, go to www.platformdiversiteit.nl
TU now and in 2010
What will TU Delft be like in 2010? Will it be a dull institution infested with mediocre white guys, or a place where, for instance, a talented Afro-Caribbean, wheelchair-bound lesbian scientist would feel right at home? The TU’s Diversity Platform wants to know. Log on to their website, www.platformdiversiteit.nl and submit your vision of the ‘ideal TU Delft’. A compilation of these online opinions, entitled ‘TU Delft in 2010’, will be presented to the TU Executive Board in September. Here’s a selection of TU lowlights and highlights thus far:
TU Delft in 2002 is: not proud; gray (regarding age and homogeneity); international but provincial; quantity instead of quality; defensive instead of inspired.
TU Delft in 2010 is: a playground of creativity; exciting, dynamic; proud; selective; conscious that diversity is conducive for quality.
Comments are closed.