On invitation of Marita Antikainen, Degree Programme Manager of the bachelor and master education of Hospitality Management of Turku University of Applied Sciences in Turku, Finland, Ab Reitsma was present at their international week.
Lisa Slevitch from the School of Hotel and Restaurant Administration of he Oklahoma State University, USA gave lectures about: (1) managing workspace diversity and (2) Globalisation and its impact on business environments.
Ab Reitsma from the School of Facility Management, Hanze University Groningen gave a lecture about Human Resource Management and Organisation.
Colleagues of The Hague University gave lectures about Real Estate (Ruud van Wezel) and Facility Management and Risk Management (Paul Pouw).
Richard Barnes of the Aberdeen Business School gave a lecture about cultural aspects of international hospitality management.
Michael Holden of the School of Built Environment and Engineering of the University of Bolton, UK, gave a lecture about Customer expectations in condition based surveys in England.
Sebastian Bakalarczyk, from the Technical University of Lodz, Poland gave a lecture about Crisis and its impact on business opportunities in EU.
Furthermore Ab participated in Round Table Discussions with students about topics of: HRM and Organisational Development, Leadership, Quality Management.
On Thursday April 7. an education team meeting of the Nordic Facilities Management Network was held in Turku. FM representatives of Iceland, Norway, Sweden, Finland and Danmark make part of this Nordic FM network. This Nordic FM network is very interested in the National Facility Management Competency Profile which has been developed and recently updated by the LOOFD (Dutch Association Facility Management Education). Ab gave a presentation about this Dutch Competence Profile and explained how this profile is been worked out within the School of Facility Management of The Hanze University Groningen. The members of the Nordic FM see the Dutch FM profile as a valuable source of inspiration to develop a common Nordic FM profile.
During the week student groups of around 15 Finnish Universities of Applied Sciences were competing for the so called Resto award. An award for the best poster performance about themes of the Hospitality branch. It was the 10th anniversary of this Resto award. It was wonderful to see how students were doing their utmost to reach the top! See picture.
Looking back on this week, I can say that it has been a great week. Very inspiring to teach and work with Finnish students and colleagues. The culture in Groningen and the Finnish culture aren’t that different J I have laid some new interesting contacts with universities in the Hospitality branch in USA, England and Scotland. Last, but not least, it was a great experience to see that the Nordic FM network was so interested in the Dutch approach of FM education. Marita, Tuomas and other colleagues: thank you so much for this opportunity!
