The honeymoon is almost over for TU Delft and its new President, Hans van Luijk, who turns out to be a realist who plans to be careful with the TU’s finances.
The mild-mannered President also plans to get closer to campus life.
No expensive urban development plans with a slew of new buildings, forget about rivalling MIT, and 25 percent of the TU’s ‘worst’ research groups won’t be axed within the next six months%. President Van Luijk certainly isn’t a man of overweening ambitions, like his predecessor Nico de Voogd. Van Luijk’s starting point: Let’s stay realistic. And striving to rival MIT doesn’t seem very realistic to him, because MIT has much more money.
Van Luijk thinks borrowing lots of money for new buildings is “extremely unwise, because the TU would have no money left over for research and education. “We can hardly afford the costs of renovating existing buildings,” he says. Moreover, costs are rising owing to stricter fire prevention laws in the Netherlands and rules aimed at preventing Legionnaire’s disease, adding up to 2.8 million euro bill for next year.
Van Luijk has been TU President for a month. During his tour of the university, Van Luijk discovered that TU researchers are extremely enthusiastic about their own projects, but less committed to the university as a whole. They often don’t even use the logo of TU Delft in their presentations. When talking about university policy, TU staffers reacted cautiously. “Of course people don’t immediately share their frustrations with a newcomer,” he says.
“The TU’s internal communication is poor,” and that must change, Van Luijk says. He plans to close the gap between policy makers and the shop floor by meeting people during lunch and moving his office to the heart of TU campus, the Design, Engineering and Production faculty building.
Vanity
“We want to show people that the Dean, Rector and President share the same ambition,” Van Luijk says. And that that ambition didn’t change with his succession. Van Luijk also plans to focus on leading research groups. However, he knows that the focal points of the TU’s research, the research portfolio, can’t be changed overnight: “At Shell, we could stop something within three months, but at the TU this is a process that takes years. We must do this carefully, however, because if there’s too much insecurity our best researchers will be the first to leave.”
“Choosing to focus on top research is not done out of vanity,” Van Luijk states. “It’s purely a necessity to attract talented researchers and funding.” He wants faculties to free-up more money for top research by having research groups share staff and equipment, thereby saving money. Furthermore, Van Luijk plans to talk to other universities about exchanging research subjects. And if that doesn’t provide enough financial capacity, the groups that aren’t performing well will have to be gradually dismantled.
The honeymoon is almost over for TU Delft and its new President, Hans van Luijk, who turns out to be a realist who plans to be careful with the TU’s finances. The mild-mannered President also plans to get closer to campus life.
No expensive urban development plans with a slew of new buildings, forget about rivalling MIT, and 25 percent of the TU’s ‘worst’ research groups won’t be axed within the next six months%. President Van Luijk certainly isn’t a man of overweening ambitions, like his predecessor Nico de Voogd. Van Luijk’s starting point: Let’s stay realistic. And striving to rival MIT doesn’t seem very realistic to him, because MIT has much more money.
Van Luijk thinks borrowing lots of money for new buildings is “extremely unwise, because the TU would have no money left over for research and education. “We can hardly afford the costs of renovating existing buildings,” he says. Moreover, costs are rising owing to stricter fire prevention laws in the Netherlands and rules aimed at preventing Legionnaire’s disease, adding up to 2.8 million euro bill for next year.
Van Luijk has been TU President for a month. During his tour of the university, Van Luijk discovered that TU researchers are extremely enthusiastic about their own projects, but less committed to the university as a whole. They often don’t even use the logo of TU Delft in their presentations. When talking about university policy, TU staffers reacted cautiously. “Of course people don’t immediately share their frustrations with a newcomer,” he says.
“The TU’s internal communication is poor,” and that must change, Van Luijk says. He plans to close the gap between policy makers and the shop floor by meeting people during lunch and moving his office to the heart of TU campus, the Design, Engineering and Production faculty building.
Vanity
“We want to show people that the Dean, Rector and President share the same ambition,” Van Luijk says. And that that ambition didn’t change with his succession. Van Luijk also plans to focus on leading research groups. However, he knows that the focal points of the TU’s research, the research portfolio, can’t be changed overnight: “At Shell, we could stop something within three months, but at the TU this is a process that takes years. We must do this carefully, however, because if there’s too much insecurity our best researchers will be the first to leave.”
“Choosing to focus on top research is not done out of vanity,” Van Luijk states. “It’s purely a necessity to attract talented researchers and funding.” He wants faculties to free-up more money for top research by having research groups share staff and equipment, thereby saving money. Furthermore, Van Luijk plans to talk to other universities about exchanging research subjects. And if that doesn’t provide enough financial capacity, the groups that aren’t performing well will have to be gradually dismantled.
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