MSM welcomes new students for Academic Year 2015-2016

The Introduction Day ceremony, held on 14 September 2015, marked the start of a new academic year at Maastricht School of Management. It is the second most important day of the year at MSM after Graduation.

“You may be surprised to know that 43 nationalities are represented in this room right now (…). It is great to see you all gathered in the room here,” said Oliver Olson, Director Global Education Programs at MSM as he welcomed a full audience of international students, faculty and staff. Among the new cohort of students, some will stay at MSM for a period of 3 weeks (Project Identification, Development and Management (PDM) participants), others for 3 months (Research Methods and Skills (RMS) and Project Management (PM) participants) and as for the students of the residential MBA class and students of the new Master in Management program will spend an entire year in Maastricht. In total, almost 90 students started the academic year at MSM.

MSM Dean Director Prof. Wim Naudé was pleased to welcome students from corporate partners: “It is very important for us to establish linkages with companies. One of the companies that have been sending their staff to MSM for almost 15 years is the Baosteel Corporation of China and we are very happy to welcome four participants from Baosteel today”.

Prof. Naudé went on to give the new students a short overview of Maastricht School of Management, its activities, programs and people. “Roughly speaking, we offer more than 42 different types of programs, with more than 12 partners throughout the world. And although we have a group here of about a hundred starting today in Maastricht, we have seven times as many students starting out in the rest of the world in different programs that we run with partner institutions.”

Prof. Naudé emphasized that MSM’s programs are demanding and that the students have to work hard, but that it is important to keep a healthy and fulfilling work-life balance: “We expect a lot from you, but we also want you to have fun. So work hard, have fun, network and make this a great time at MSM.”

Oliver Olson encouraged the students to make it their personal goal to meet as many as people as possible while in Maastricht. He invited the audience to join their first network opportunity in the business lounge during a short reception before proceeding with the rest of the activities planned for the day.

For many students, this was the first occasion to meet and start conversations with faculty and staff members, and their fellow students. They shared their first impressions of Maastricht and the Netherlands and talked about their professional backgrounds as well as their expectations about their respective programs.

We wish all our students a successful new academic year ahead!