The Impact of Higher Education: Addressing the challenges of the 21st century
EAIR 35th Annual Forum 2013, Rotterdam, the Netherlands, 28-31 August 2013 The Forum will be hosted by the Erasmus University Rotterdam.
As your Forum Chair for the 35the Annual Forum in 2013 it’s my privilege to invite you to the Netherlands and the Erasmus University Rotterdam (EUR) next August. This year’s theme is The Impact of Higher Education with the subtitle Addressing the challenges of the 21st century. We will be honoured with your presence.
Hundred years young: Erasmus University Rotterdam is in 2013 one of the youngest universities in our country. Having started in 1913 with 55 students in a single discipline (Commerce), who were provisionally accommodated in two classrooms in the former stock exchange or Beurs, today, the university has around 25,000 students enrolled in around 20 bachelor and 50 master programmes. A quarter of these students come from abroad. The two classrooms have made way for two campuses, built brick by brick in the last few years. The new Woudestein campus will be festively opened again in our centennial year.
Thinking power combined with acting power; this is embedded in our university’s DNA. Developing and sharing knowledge to solve the issues of today and tomorrow: in Rotterdam, our testing ground and laboratory - and worldwide. Our pillars are health, prosperity, management and culture.
At home in the world is our motto whose essence we have borrowed from our patron Desiderius Erasmus, the famous Renaissance thinker, who was born in Rotterdam. The whole earth is my fatherland. This, too, is embedded in our DNA – no wonder in a world port city like Rotterdam. Where merchants and business men once established a (private) graduate school, for years now we have had a campus that has become an international classroom for students and researchers from all over the globe.
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