A selection from the year 2021 according to the FGGA Faculty Board & Office
What was the year like for the FGGA faculty board & office? A number of departments share what 2021 was like for them.
Erwin Muller - Dean
2021 was another special year for the faculty. I am proud that we are all still a vibrant community where hard work and resounding results are achieved. Despite and sometimes even because of Corona, we have started many new initiatives. We are working on beautiful new things in both the educational and research fields. The Campus The Hague strategy has also been further shaped this year, giving our faculty an even more stable position in The Hague. But let me also mention that the workload was also very high this year. Reducing this workload has a high priority and in 2022 we should also be able to show results in this area.
Koen Caminada - Vice Dean
2021 was an excellent year for the Vice-Dean. The hard work being done to improve the quality of our educational programmes is paying off and I am very proud to be able to talk about our successes. Intrinsically motivated teachers and support staff, courses that receive high evaluation scores, a rising interests in our programmes and our programmes are very popular among employers.
The influx of students has increased yet again by 12% compared to the previous year. As far as various indicators on student satisfaction and graduation percentages per course go, these are all pointing in the right direction. The average score of the course evaluations, for instance, continued to rise to a 7.9 on a scale from 1 – 10. The percentage of students passing a course rose with 4.2% to 81%. And we have never before been able to hand out this many diplomas. Out of the 22 new educational initiatives, 6 have been implemented with another 4 planning to be rolled out during the next two years. We also have two new bachelor programmes and two new master programmes in the works. And we have, of course, been able to introduce the system Learn Anywhere (three new classrooms) to help elevate our hybrid education. Fantastic results despite the difficult circumstances caused by the pandemic.
There were, of course, personal highs and lows, such as the attention of the press for our new book ‘Inkomen verdeeld, trends 1977 – 2019’ and the visit of Ministers President Justin Trudeau and Mark Rutten to the Campus. The attendance rate of students during the physical courses we spent so much energy on preparing was disappointing. And we kept anxiously awaiting the Corona press conferences to find out to what extend we had to, yet again, reorganise our planned courses. We are now in the 8th regime since the start of the pandemic. It has not been a dull year, on the contrary!
Gert Renkema - Financial & Economic Affairs (FEA)
Despite corona, 2021 was business as usual for the FEA team. This meant that we have produced a budget, issued financial projections, developed business cases, drafted tariff proposals, sent out hundreds of invoices, etcetera. The rapid and continuing growth of the FGGA organisation makes it a real challenge to stay in control financially, to know where we are at and what to expect. We are very proud to have managed this in 2021. And happily, 2021 has also been a sound financial year for FGGA. Our latest prognosis shows a positive financial result of a little over 100,000 Euros. Which is a fantastic result after the negative financial results from the last few years. This is mainly due to the additional funds FGGA receives from the Nationaal Programma Onderwijs. We feel confident that 2022 will be another good year and as FEA team we are ready and waiting to support the FGGA organisation with its continuing growth.
HR
The year 2021 was another hectic year for HR FGGA. Our regular team was faced with absentees due to illness; Erica Radelaar was absent for most of the year, Joyce Maes for a limited period. Luckily, we managed to hire a few outside professionals to help Joyce continue to supply HR advice to the Faculty:
A familiar face, Jeannine Wellink, was able to lend a hand for a while. We also received assistance from Anita Lacroix and recently Miriam Schings. These amazing people made it possible for us to keep up with all ‘going concern’. Our junior HR advisor Mariska Rol also took up a lot of slack, but she started a new job on November 1st. A great loss for us, but a wonderful opportunity for her.
We are currently looking to hire a new colleague and hope to be able to welcome him or her at the Wijnhaven location(!) in 2022.
Laura Kamsma - International Office
2021 was a year full ups and downs for the FGGA International Office. Demanding a lot of flexibility, both from the International Office team and the students planning to go on exchange. Unfortunately, we have had to disappoint a great many students when it became clear that their exchange had to be cancelled because of corona related reasons, such as travel restrictions or cancellations from partner universities. A small group of approximately 60 students managed to go on exchange despite all this insecurity and we were able to welcome some 50 international exchange students as part of the FGGA exchange programmes. A huge compliment to Daria Chkalova, who worked incredibly hard throughout the year to make the most of the limited available options.
Victor Koppelmans - Communication & Marketing
I am proud that we at Communication & Marketing have been able to deliver wonderful projects with a lot of effort from the entire team. The recruitment of new students was once again very successful through both smart online activities and well-organized events in Wijnhaven. Internal communication was again of great importance this year in order to keep both staff and students informed of all corona measures, but also to keep the community together. With great attention and skill, a beautiful and very informative newsletter was produced every week. But there was also a lot of focus on student wellbeing and diversity. From the editorial staff a lot of wonderful stories were written and a lot of useful information was shared with staff and students.
Another great success was the Campus Camping. In almost three weeks, under the leadership of our event manager, we welcomed many staff and students in the inner garden of Wijnhaven, which had been transformed into a veritable campsite.