‘FSE needs to hire more international support staff’
Nuzzolo, an education and research officer, asked the faculty board in last week’s council meeting to reconsider whether a near-native level of Dutch is really necessary. ‘It is not something that would prevent supporting personnel from doing their job’, she says.
According to her, the language barrier is ‘demotivating’ and some scientists leave the university or don’t accept an offer because their partners can’t find an English-language job. The language dilemma also applies to PhD students who have left research, but want to stay at the university. ‘It takes time to learn Dutch and FSE excludes a lot of talented people by requiring a C1 level at the outset.’
Fellow faculty council member and degree programme coordinator Eva Teuling supports Nuzzolo. Although FSE has a lot of international students and scientific staff, she says, ‘compared to the rest of the faculty, our support staff is not diverse’. She stresses that it’s too early to talk about opening English-language vacancies, though. ‘We’re still at step one.’
‘I think we would also like our staff to actually learn the Dutch language to some extent’, dean Jasper Knoester responded during the faculty council meeting. ‘It goes both ways, but I think it is a good point.’