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FONTY’S INTERNATIONAL WEEK 2019: HAPPINESS OF THE NEXT GENERATION

May 7, 2019 


Steve Lorini and Ted Glenn were selected as part of this year’s Short-Term Faculty Exchange. Humber’s Internationalization objective is to develop strategic partnerships focused on intercultural exchanges and programming that seek to engage the Humber community in academic exchanges and collaboration. This year, The Faculty of Business worked with Fonty’s University of Applied Sciences, in the Netherlands. Students’ fields of interests included: Economics & Marketing, Arts, Communication, Logistics, Engineering, Health Care, and so much more. Faculty from the trip specifically spent the week in the region of Eindhoven, which is located in the Southeast of the Netherlands. It is the top technology breeding ground for innovation and is home to world-class businesses including the first Philips light bulb factory.

It was so motivating and exciting to see learning outcomes, curriculum design, course structures and more from a different institution in a country that has such a different way of learning. We attended all the different workshops, exercises, events offered by Fonty’s University of Applied Sciences. Each Faculty on the exchange also had to present a workshop or a lecture with the theme of the week being “Happiness of the next generation” based on your topic or program you teach in.

Programs have a focus on higher professional training based on a strong theoretical and practical foundation. Though Fonty’s is a University, they have structured their teaching into a format that is more similar to College Education. Teaching is done by using different methods: theoretical lectures of about 60 students and practical workshops with real world experiences rather than out of a textbook, (laboratory) assignments but also doing applied projects and self-study activities. In all programs, students can have an influence on their own content and so they are getting experience in a field unique to each student.

Not only was the experience of Fonty’s amazing, but being able to spend a week with professors from University and Colleges from all over the world was equally as memorable. Each individual story, school philosophy, program design, and culture brought teaching up to speed in terminology, techniques and skills. We are still connecting back and forth with the faculty that were invited to the exchange with new in-class ideas, topics, and potential partnerships that could be used going forward. The opportunity will make teaching even better for our students here in Canada by communicating new ideas while bridging geographic, linguistic, ideological, and cultural barriers.

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