Campus

TU opens on a global note

On September 2, TU Delft officially opened the 2013-2014 academic year with a formal Opening Ceremony. For the first time ever, this ceremony was held in English.


In the past decade, the university has slowly opened its doors to students from around the world. Today, over a third of all MSc students and two-thirds of the PhD candidates are internationals. “We want to be an international university in terms of students, the staff, the outreach and curriculum. It’s very important for us to be inclusive, which means using the language that reaches out to most people,” says Anka Mulder, Vice President for Education and Operations.


The theme of the ceremony this year was ‘It takes a global mind… to change the world’. The speakers for the afternoon stressed the importance of a global outlook, for an organisation and an individual. “Given that the theme was ‘global minds’ it would have been ironic if we had had the ceremony in Dutch,” jokes Mulder.


It’s not just this ceremony and other big events; Mulder says measures have been put into place to ensure that policy documents are also made bilingual. “From now on, all university policy documents will have a summary in English as well. For internationals on the Student Council and international employees, it is unfair that they be kept out of the loop. This is an important step,” she adds.


But the journey is only half done. She agrees that a lot more needs to be done in terms of integration, but, at the moment, things are on the right track. 

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