470 | Einen Leckerbissen für Uni- und FH-Absolventen bietet die »School of Graduate Studies« der Stenden University of Applied Sciences in Leeuwarden an: Masterstudiengänge zur Weiterbildung, die sowohl einen FH-Masterabschluss als auch einen wissenschaftlichen Uni-Abschluss Master of Arts verleihen.

Diese einzigartige Kombination kann Stenden (früherer Name: CHN) in der friesischen Hauptstadt durch die langjährige Kooperation mit der London Metropolitan University in der englischen Hauptstadt verwirklichen. Die Absolventen erhalten daher zwei Mastertitel: einen von Stenden und einen von der LondonMet.

Die international ausgerichteten Studienprogramme dauern in der Vollzeitform 12 Monate und als Teilzeitangebot 24 Monate. Sie richten sich an künftige Manager in diesen Märkten: Hotelbranche (Hospitality Management), Freizeit und Tourismus (Leisure and Tourism Studies), Einzelhandel (Retail Management) und Dienstleistung (Service Management).

Die Variante Service Management deckt ca. 60 Prozent der westlichen Wirtschaftszweige ab. Dazu gehört natürlich auch die immer noch wachsende Medienbranche, denn Medien sind Service-Unternehmen: sie sorgen für Informationen und Unterhaltung. Wer also Medienwirtschaft, Medienökonomie bzw. Media Management studiert hat, kann mit dem Master of Arts International Service Management optimal seine Karriere als Führungskraft stärken.

Bei diesen Masterprogrammen geht es nicht darum, die im vorherigen ökonomischen Diplom- oder Bachelorstudium erlangte Wirtschaftskompetenz nochmals zu intensivieren, sondern insbesondere die Führungskompetenz zu stärken. Immer mehr zeigt sich, dass Wirtschaftswissen und auch Erfahrung mit Wirtschaftprozessen nicht ausreichen, um als Führungskraft Karriere zu machen. Persönliche Kompetenzen müssen entwickelt werden und sie müssen in die sich global verändernden Systeme der Unternehmen und des Marktes einbringen können.

Den vier Masterprogrammen gemeinsam sind Kernmodule, die dafür die Basis bilden: Funktionen der Dienstleistungsgesellschaft, persönliche Wertschöpfung, Werte der Märkte, Strategien der Nachhaltigkeit und Zukunftsfähigkeit, Forschungsdesign. Es gibt zudem Wahlmodule, marktspezifische Module und die Erstellung einer Masterthesis.

Auch in dieser kompetenzgerichteten Ausrichtung sind die Masterprogramme der Stenden University ein einzigartiges Angebot. Nicht nur die Studienprogramme, sondern auch die Dozenten und Standorte sind doppelt zertifiziert: durch das niederländische Akkreditierungssystem NVAO und die britische Validierung.

Masterstudiengänge im Web-TV

Mit ca. 1.680 Stunden Workload (60 ECTS) sind die Masterstudiengänge der Stenden University of Applied Sciences echte Herausforderungen. Aus allen Ländern der Welt melden sich daher die Teilnehmer für dieses anspruchsvolle Programm an.

Viele von ihnen kommen für ein Jahr in die friesische Hauptstadt Leeuwarden und wählen die Vollzeit-Variante.

Wer die zweijährige Part-Time-Form wählt, arbeitet in seinem Beruf und kommt zu den Lehrveranstaltungen, die ca. einmal in zwei Wochen nachmittags und abends stattfinden. Mancher arbeitet auch in einem der Lehrbetriebe der Hochschule mit: dem 4-Sterne-Hotel Wyswert, dem Veranstaltungsbüro Meeting-U oder dem Institut für Service Management.

Die Masterprogramme aus Leeuwarden werden in englischer Sprache durchgeführt. Dies sichert die tatsächlich weltweite Internationalität, die für die Teilnehmer immer wieder zu spannenden Austauschmöglichkeiten führt.

Einige Studienplätze sind für den Start Ende August noch zu vergeben.

Und wer gern berufsbegleitend dieses Masterstudium anpacken will, kann sich auch für einen Start im November am Partner-Standort Köln anmelden.

Weitere Informationen und Anmeldungen: School of Graduate Studies - http://www.Stenden-Master.nl

Schnelle Anfragen: Info@Stenden-Master.nl / Telefon 00 31 - 58 - 2 44 14 42.

451 | You have already obtained a Bachelor’s degree and you are looking for a Master’s program that could help you to achieve the next steps of your carriere? Welcome to Stenden’s International Management Master programs!

Stenden University of Applied Sciences is offering 4 programs with some more variations at the main campus in Leeuwarden and at some study centers in The Netherlands and elsewhere:

• Master of International Leisure and Tourism Studies
• Master of International Retail Management
• Master of International Service Management
• Master of International Hospitality Management

These programs are approved for years and now already in preparation for re-accreditation by NVAO.

Furthermore, the programs are validated and continuously quality inspected by London Metropolitan University, one of the biggest Business Schools in the UK, and complemented by LondonMet’s »Master of Arts« grading.

I personally may warrant the quality of aims, content and didactics of these one year (full-time) and two year (part-time) master programs.

By the way, the tuition fees are not so expensive, compared with many other master programs…

Read more…

441 | Auch die Informationsvideos der Stenden School of Graduate Studies über die internationalen Masterstudiengänge der Hochschule sind jetzt zugleich in einem Web-TV-Channel als auch einzeln abrufbar, »on demand«, verfügbar. Sogar ein Live-Chat ist integriert.

Mehr Informationen

426 | One of my colleagues is Sjoerd Gehrels - a very popular docent, holding different Master degrees and besides all the hard work finishing his doctoral dissertation.

A portrait by Iffat Hussain

Before Mr Sjoerd Gehrels started working at Stenden University in 1989 he had just finished ten years of his professional life in the hospitality industry. Sommelier (wine manager) and operation manager in Michelin starred restaurants were some of the positions he worked in.

At Stenden, Sjoerd Gehrels started with in rooms division as kitchen lecturer and lecturer in Hospitality Management. Building the organization of Hotel Wyswert and the hospitality curriculum of the hotel school had great priority. In 1998, when a major reorganization took place, he applied for the position of deputy director. “At that time the internationalization process really took of and the number of students in IHM almost doubled, and now it is the third biggest of its kind in the world.”

Since 2004 when the management structure changed again he has been involved in a portfolio of duties and responsibilities. He considers as his most important duty to teach in both the School of Graduate Studies and the Undergraduate programme of IHM connected to research. He feels teaching is very rewarding.

In his amiable way he explains: “It is very rewarding to teach and join research with both bachelor and master students. In my Doctor of Education study in the University of Stirling in Scotland I am also a student and therefore it is much easier to identify with the students at Stenden. Furthermore, I work for Prof. Dr. Martin Gertler and Dr. Elena Cavagnaro in the Stenden Research Group Service Studies (Kenniskring) and I coordinate the MA in International Hospitality Management and as of September 2009 the new Master in International Higher Education Management.”

As project manager and consultant Sjoerd Gehrels is also responsible for Stenden CRU Campus in Thailand, for the new director of international affairs Jan Nabers. “It is very interesting to see that the Grand Tour really enriches students’ lives.” There is also an average of around 15 -17 students on internship in Jamaica and the East-Caribbean that he supervises for IHM.

Sjoerd Gehrels loves to work with Stenden. He appreciates the way Stenden has developed and continues to grow. “As the world around us is internationalizing at an enormous speed I am grateful to be with Stenden. The developments in our university of applied sciences have been enormous and in the past 19 years of employment here not one single year was the same as the previous one. I find it fascinating that Stenden operates all the different locations in The Netherlands and abroad. It has opened up many opportunities for mobility and growth both institutionally and personally.”

Sjoerd Gehrels has three grand children. He loves to spend his time with his family. When asked about his goals he explains “My goal for the future is to try to contribute to our school and the students’ learning as much as possible. And maybe more importantly spend a lot of precious quality time with my wife, three children (26, 23 and 18) and three grandchildren (6,4 and 2). I have to admit that we started young at building a family but bringing my grandchildren to school in the morning whenever possible is just sheer happiness!”

424 | Edou Hilverda was born in Sneek in Friesland. He lived in Bolsward until the age of 17. After secondary education in Bolsward he started his Bachelors in International Hospitality Management at Stenden in Leeuwarden. Despite the small distance between Bolsward and Leeuwarden he decided to move to Leeuwarden to experience and enjoy student life to the fullest.

by Iffat Hussain

Edou is always looking for challenges in his life. He wants to use his potential to its fullest.

“The first 2 years at CHN I was not too motivated. I was too busy partying and doing trips throughout the Netherlands by train. Besides my busy life I felt IHM was not very challenging for me. Often I successfully passed a module assignment by only working one or two nights in the last week of a module. In the second year I was even thinking about leaving. After a thorough thought I decided to stay. In my third year I became more motivated. The module assignments were more challenging and of course I grew to maturity. Furthermore I was able to choose the elective semester Humanitarian Hospitality Management. This was a subject that really interested and still interests me.”

He did his internship at the facility department of MCL, the hospital in Leeuwarden. He had a very good leaning experience there and decided to continue working for another two years after his internship. He worked at the ‘Bedrijfsbureau’. This department, in addition to other things was mainly responsible for MCL-broad projects, movements, interior and design, and the department was closely concerned with the building and rebuilding of the new MCL.

Now he is studying part-time MA in International Service Management at the School of Graduate Studies, and is also working as a junior practical instructor of the facility department of Hotel Wyswert, where he is having new experience of managing people. This part-time programme is the best thing he likes in Stenden, in addition to have interaction with people of different cultural backgrounds.

He adds: “I like the interaction between teachers and students. The distance between teachers and students is smaller than I have experienced during my previous education. I think this is really motivating.”

After his Masters he wants to do a traineeship abroad to gain international experience. He further adds “Like many people I also have big dreams, but maybe I will also end up ’huisje boompje beestje’, (having wife, children and a pet). But I won’t marry. I really believe that if you love somebody, then you don’t have to promise this to her by means of a marriage.”

Edou’s dream is to travel more. When he is finished with his studies and have earned enough money, he would be exploring new places. He says “I want to travel around the globe. I want to see different cultures. I have travelled to France, Portugal, Turkey, Belgium, Germany, Spain, and of course almost all of Netherlands but I also want to experience countries with completely different cultures. I had this dream since childhood. Once I will be finished with my study and have earned enough money I will definitely travel more. Eventually I would like to contribute my experience and knowledge to an international organisation in the field of development assistance.”

Watch the Master students working

424 | It is not often that we see a convergence and divergence of minds together in one room, providing all kinds of new insights and perspectives in various areas of research. The research group of Service Studies, School of Graduate Studies, and International Hospitality Management presented a day of research, in the form of an academic conference.

This day saw a collection of students, researchers, lecturers and other visitors present at the plenary session and workshops to discuss and share innovative research methods in service studies. Some central themes were presented at the contemplation centre, which served as the stage for presentations by key speakers with the workshops taking place at Hotel Wyswert.

Introduction

by Alexander Grit, Stenden Hogeschool, University of Applied Sciences

A salon is a gathering of people under the roof of an inspiring hostess or host, partly to amuse one another and partly to refine their taste and increase their knowledge through conversation and readings.

The most famous of the literary salons of Paris formed in the 1620’s were the Hotel de Rambouillet by Madame de Rambouillet and the rival salon that gathered around Madeleine de Scudery. In the salons of Paris, the precieuses refined the French language even before the Academie francaise was founded.

I would like to take you to the turn of the century Berlin. A city which was growing at a fast rate. In this city was home of the famous Jewish German Philosopher and sociologic George Simmel.

Simmel played an active part in the intellectual and cultural life of the capital, frequenting many fashionable salons and participating in various cultural circles.

He introduced the term the blase person. This person was suffering from the city life, a new type of individual defined not by class, gender, professional or ethnic identity but by psychological disposition. Simmels blase person incorporates notions of the environmental causes of mental disease. The blase individual exhibits a special kind of neurosis, brought on by the intensity and motley disorder of metropolitan communication, the jostling crowdedness of city streets, with their shifts and contradictions in events, rapid telescoping of changing images . . . [and] unexpectedness of violent stimuli.

The cure for condition was as what Simmel called sociability, or the play form of association, as encountered not in the public spaces of the city but in the semipublic/ semi-private space of the salon, offered the blase person the greatest therapeutic value.

Simmel also had a salon in his house at the corner of the corner of Leipzigerstrasse and Friedrichstrasse.

This would correspond to Times Square in New York. In this salon he could distance between himself and the urban masses, allowing Simmel to retreat to the safety of the salon.

Apart from the therapeutic value the salon from Simmel provided a massive impact on a group of intellectuals which in many respects came to dominate German social thought for many decades. Simmel also attended informal discussions in the Weber household with other German scholars, and though Weber often disagreed with Simmel, he was nevertheless influenced by him.

The salon in its most pure form the sociability of the salon shows itself in the flow of a lightly amusing play in which the heavily burdened forces of reality are felt only as from a distance, their weight fleetingly in a charm. Our Salons de Wyswert are in the state of becoming and you will be playing the performance. They will offer platforms for exchange.

»Lines of Flights«

by Anand Mishra

The day started with the welcoming of the visitors, after which some opening speeches and introductions were made. The first speaker was Dr. Paul Lynch, who specializes in the teaching of management and enterprise in the hospitality and tourism industries. Knowledge and innovation were widely spoken about where he identified them as separate concepts,following which he presented some criticisms in the hospitality research paradigms. According to Dr. Lynch, there are existing narrow interpretations and methodologies of research in terms of hospitality, a lack of an integrated theoretical basis and a widespread tendency to ignore the smaller voices in a management hierarchy. Interpretations of hospitality research are captured from the perspective of different philosophies and schools of thought.

“We should be developing students as philosophical practitioners able not only to do but to develop and create in a sense of personal and business skills.” Dr. Lynch also spoke of a hospitality lens, the traditional one focusing on the host-guest transaction and the exchange of quality; and the useful transformation of this lens across disciplines and perspectives. “Hospitality is a mirror reflecting society norms, culture and beliefs. It exists at multiple society levels and leads to an understanding of society in general.”

Dr. Stanislav Ivanov; assistant professor at the International University College, Bulgaria, and editor-in-chief of the newly established European Journal of Tourism Research, was next. He presented an overview of common mistakes and shortcomings in tourism research such as plagiarism, insignificant research, lack of practical application, lack of references and outdated literature reviews.

“There is a preoccupation with methodology rather than analysis and the practical and theoretical implications of the research. Is it hospitality research or research into methodology using hospitality and tourism as an example?” Dr. Ivanov went on to discuss about questionnaire design, “There has to be a trade-off between the number of questions, the time taken to fill each questionnaire and the number of filled questionnaires.”

Dr. Grete Birtwistle is the head of the division of Fashion, Marketing and Retailing at the Glasgow Caledonian University, U.K. Having had extensive experience in fashion retailing, the idea for her current research topic stemmed from reading several research dissertations. She spoke about the differences in consumer behaviour between fashion adopters and fashion followers. In the U.K., where celebrities play an important role in branding, a large majority of people are fashion followers.

“We are moving into a throw-away society,” says Dr. Birtwistle. “Throw-away fashion is strongly significant. Fashion adopters hardly ever wear clothes more than once!” Understanding the fashion adoption phenomenon would ultimately lead to an understanding of the fashion trends since fashion adopters have an influence on the rest of the market.

Having worked as the chairperson in the Council for Hospitality Management Education (CHME) and currently supervising seven doctoral students, Dr. Stephen Ball from the Sheffield Hallam University, U.K., presented some of his views on qualitative research design. His focus is on the examination of leadership of academics in hospitality research. “Leadership is quite a slippery concept,” says Dr. Ball. There are different views of leadership as a property of social systems at different levels of organisation.

“In this context, three elements come into the picture – the notion of setting and achieving goals, the role of group activities and the feature of influencing behaviour of others.” An important concept expressed by Dr. Ball was the concept of selfleaders: “There were some leaders who revolved in their own projects and through their work were in fact leading others. You must lead yourself and take other people as fellow travellers.” “Our busy age doesn’t always have the time to read but always has the time to look.”

The last speaker for the day, Ms. Tijana Rakic, a doctoral candidate from Napier University at Edinburgh, U.K. actively uses video, an innovative research technique in the social sciences. Through the showing of some films, she explained how visual methods in research can be more interesting in comparison to traditional methods of research in the process of creating knowledge. One of them was a co-produced ethnographic documentary on tourism impacts in the island of Crete while the other was an unfinished video of her current doctoral research, exploring the construction and consumption of images of Greekness by visitors to the Acropolis in Athens, Greece. She points out that moving images are becoming important; they have an immediate effect and are easy to describe. Visual methods are on the rise among disciplines and can reach out to wider audiences. Footage can be used as a diary to create a research study or a documentary. “Researchers do not have to be filmmakers – they can join other projects and learn,” concludes Ms. Rakic.