The faculty board has come up with new names for the faculty in both Dutch and English. Mathematics and Natural Sciences will be called the Faculty of Science and Engineering from now on (Faculteit Bètawetenschappen en Technologie).
The faculty board and the RUG’s communication department refused to respond to questions by the UK about why they wanted a different name. The faculty board did inform the faculty council that one important reason was ‘promoting their technical profile’.
‘Since we will be opening the Center for Engineering in the fall of 2016, we would like to change the faculty name at the same time in the interest of promotion and news value. We are hoping it will be a quick procedure’, the faculty board writes to the council.
The faculty is also planning to export two master programmes – chemical engineering and biomedical engineering – to the future campus in Yantai.
The council will have a meeting about the name change on Wednesday.
Natural Sciences
The faculty board originally wanted to change the Dutch name to ‘Faculteit Natuurwetenschappen en Technologie’ (Faculty of Natural Sciences and Technology), but the Johann Bernoulli Institute did not like that at all. ‘They felt the word ‘natural sciences’ was unacceptable, because mathematics and computer sciences aren’t natural sciences. The Dutch word bètawetenschappen (sciences) covers all the fields at our faculty’, the faculty board writes.
The university board supports the name change, but will wait for the results of the faculty council meeting. The new name will also be discussed in the University Council on Thursday.