Competing against others is easy – you must set your own standards and be the best version of yourself. This is one of the lessons the CEO of Wittenborg University of Applied Sciences, Maggie Feng, learned early in life from her father, Feng Li San. Feng talked about her relationship with her father, growing up in the Chinese capital Beijing, and the pressures of being an A-student in an interview that was published in the Dutch financial daily, Het Financieele Dagblad, on Tuesday.

This week WUAS attended the Higher School of Economics International Partners Week, held at its St Petersburg campus to celebrate 20 years of that HSE location. Wittenborg was represented by its Chair, Peter Birdsall. The partnership week sees a range of HSE partner institutes from around the world coming together to discuss internationalisation and further strengthen their partnership ties with HSE, and often with each other. The IPW was themed "Universities: How to Be a Step Ahead", in order to highlight the importance of international academic collaboration and share best practices in addressing the challenges of the ongoing "academic revolution" : massification, commercialization, digitalization and globalization of HE and also gave an opportunity for institutes to forge new ties with each other.

With only a few months to go before graduation, Norwegian student, Hanne Garnvik, has just started a franchise business which has the exclusive rights to sell all-natural skin-care products in the Netherlands from award-winning Norwegian brand Marina Miracle. With all the legalities out of the way, pre-sales will open this Friday, 18 May, on the new Dutch website before the official launch on 1 June. Garnvik will open the business in partnership with her Dutch boyfriend, Joost Julsing.

This May Wittenborg University of Applied Sciences has its highest growth in new student intake for the past year. Compared to May last year, student numbers have almost tripled. Percentage wise the growth (184%) was even higher than the September intake (18,7%), though in actual numbers there were more students who started at Wittenborg in September 2017 than in May 2018.

In a letter addressed to The Dutch minister of education the management of Wittenborg University of Applied Sciences, has voiced its concern about the recent spate of “negativity” regarding the recruitment of international students in the Netherlands. In its letter, Wittenborg also raises serious concerns about research universities' disregard for the Dutch binary system in higher education, specifically with regard to entrance requirements for non-EU students, for instance from China and Russia.

The Head of Wittenborg University of Applied Sciences’ Business School, Dr Rauf Abdul, attended the Association to Advance Collegiate Schools of Business (AACSB) annual accreditation conference in London this week, where he received Wittenborg’s new membership certificate and forged new relations with peers from many countries in Europe, the Middle East and Africa.

Wittenborg directors Maggie Feng and Peter Birdsall visited the Netherlands Education Support Office (Neso) in Beijing, China, yesterday to discuss recruitment of Chinese students to Dutch universities of applied sciences, and in particular to Dutch research universities. Their meeting was hosted by Neso director Mr Charles Hoedt, who is currently leading the ‘study in Holland’ initiative in China.

Wittenborg CEO, Maggie Feng, was recently one of the speakers at the Cleantech Tomorrow Business Day, which was attended by more than a thousand visitors at the Teuge Airport, close to Apeldoorn. Feng joined entrepreneurs, managers, students and representatives from the education sector as well as government – all in pursuit of creating a sustainable environment and a clean economy.

Internationally acclaimed rock band Kensington will feature in the opening concert of the annual Drakenboot Festival this year, taking place in Apeldoorn from 22 - 24 June. All-in-all there will be 7 bands taking part in the opening concert. The Drakenboot Festival is one of the top annual events in Apeldoorn, drawing up to 100,000 visitors. Wittenborg University of Applied Sciences, headquartered in Apeldoorn, has always supported the festival, and its students have often been involved in the event. In 2015 for instance, students collected data from visitors and on how to improve the festival.

Senior WUAS lecturer and researcher, Geert de Haan, recently presented a paper on human-robot interaction at a conference on Cognitive Ergonomics in Sweden where he urged developers of Artificial Intelligence (AI) systems to adopt a user-centric approach to their inventions.