With the refurbishment of that hall last year, all the classic state portraits of former deans (only men) disappeared from the wall. Current dean Annemie Schols, the first female “boss” of the faculty, regularly received complaints: couldn't it be more diverse? So last year she called on people to come up with an alternative to the wall. Until Wednesday, it remained bare and white. Now photos of all the former deans of medicine, health sciences and the later fusion faculty FHML are united in a work of art: gold medallions with faces on a blue wall, which is intersected by a light blue, wavy stripe. A symbol of the Meuse River, explains artist Arjen van Prooijen, but also “a heartbeat through time, growing larger at the end because of the merger.”
"Barefoot social workers"
Sitting in “a large tutor group,” the stories about the sometimes chaotic early years come out; the political fight for the right to exist in the 1980s and, naturally, problem-based education: the young university's unique selling point, which was viewed with suspicion elsewhere in the country. “There was a perception that we were being trained to become 'barefoot social workers,'” recalls one emeritus. Initially, too, it was more “a religion, a system of beliefs than anything else,” notes another, but now much research has been done on it “and we can make a good case for why we do what we do.”