By Trevor Maloney
When asked about the first years of University College Roosevelt (UCR), then the 
Roosevelt Academy (RA), Dr. Barbara Oomen, Dean of UCR, chose to describe the “generation of pioneers”, both students and staff, as taking a “plunge into the deep”. Adding further that the university as a whole, “…was nothing but a dream, it was like a crazy idea having a university in Zeeland.”
Over the years, UCR has fully embraced the depths of that plunge, and since it celebrates its 10th anniversary this calendar year, I sat down with Dr. Oomen to get a sense of her thoughts on the past ten years here at UCR, its current status, and the next ten years.
The Road to 10
The road to ten began with a simple idea of having 600 students move into the old Town Hall in Middelburg, which was not in use at the time. It took roughly two years, from the first mention of housing a university in the old Town Hall until the founding of Roosevelt Academy: a swift process considering the totality of logistics in founding such an institution.
“I’ve always been impressed by the fact that this place came off the ground here so quickly”, says Dr. Oomen. She went on to praise the “swift government decision-making” and the willingness of all parties in Zeeland to support having a university in the province. This show of support was demonstrated in part by a collected effort of the local Rotary Club to raise money to offer grants for students to attend RA.
Dr. Oomen began teaching at RA in 2006, after having moved to Middelburg in 2005. With classes of only 12 students at that time, the level of engagement of the students was a “shock” to her. While laughing, Dr. Oomen remarked that of these 12 students, half would have “…read the book already during the holidays” and wanted more of a challenge in class. This was in stark contrast to what she was used to: “teaching at the law faculty” and “standing up in front of 200 students, or 300, or whatever, and basically summarizing the book.” She added that “the context, the culture, and the degree to which students grow, but also instructors grow” was impressive.
There have been some institutional struggles over the past ten years, some of which are even ongoing. “There’s still the struggle to have the four inner-city housing locations.” The initial promise from Woongoed, UCR’s main provider for student housing, was to have four campus locations, and up to date, there are only three, namely Koestraat, Roggeveenhof, and Bagijnhof. And while there is officially no fourth campus location, there has been mention of creating one right across the street from Eleanor.
Another struggle, one more fundamental to education at UCR, is the amount of explaining it took and still requires of the concept of the Liberal Arts and Sciences. While there is still much to do to in that regard, Dr. Oomen stated that: “We have such a good name, and our students have so much functioned as ambassadors for [UCR]”, that many tops schools such as Oxford University, are sending letters to UCR asking to send more students their way.
The Here and Now
While UCR is approaching its 10th birthday, Dr. Oomen maintained that we are still a “pioneering organization”; “we haven’t lost that energy of doing something radically new and different.” In line with this “pioneering” characteristic, and as a distinguishing factor, UCR is the only University College (UC) that has a Performing Arts track. “I really like the fact that we always have music in the building”, said Oomen. In pointing out the contrast between education programs in the U.S. and here in the Netherlands, she remarked, “It’s actually strange that in the Netherlands an Arts education and a university education are really two separate fields.”
In addition to this, UCR is currently in a consolidation phase: focusing mainly on professionalizing as an organization. A Board of Examiners was put into place to monitor such things as grade appeals whereas before, the atmosphere surrounding such matters were handled in a relatively “informal, family-like” situation.
Dr. Oomen mentioned that it’s always boring when things are going well, but she feels that “[UCR] is very much in that stage”, adding, “We are running smoothly, we’re getting in enough students, we have wonderful faculty and staff working here; people who work very hard.” The consequences of spending 80% of the university budget on education is that the support staff, people who work very hard, only have 20% of the budget, yet thanks to the general commitment to the ideal of offering the very best education, the university manages with these budget proportions.
10 Years Down the Road
UCR published a strategic plan outlining their goals for the 2012-2016. This plan mentions three pillars: Global Citizenship, Teaching Excellence, and Undergraduate Research. The future of UCR will be guided by these concepts.
In partnership with the Roosevelt Study Center and the Roosevelt Institute, UCR is working to advance the legacy of the Roosevelt family. This will be done in part to stress the dedication of the university to the ideals of fundamental freedoms (the Four Freedoms), human rights and education for global citizenship. As a first step, there will be a course here at UCR taught by the Roosevelt Study Center on the Roosevelt legacy. This course will involve both a historical and international relations component.
The Netherlands Flemish Accreditation Organization (NVAO), recently awarded UCR a “Label of Excellence: for teaching and learning. “We want to consolidate our lead position in the field of teaching excellence”, said Dr. Oomen. UCR is currently recruiting a professor in educational excellence who will be in charge of leading all of the teaching and learning excellence initiatives here at UCR. It’s the hope of Dr. Oomen that UCR can offer courses on pedagogy and teaching excellence to students, saying, “[UCR] students are generally very good teachers”, citing students’ frequency in giving presentations.
While the official strategic plan lists Liberal Arts and Sciences as the third pillar, undergraduate research was highlighted as an important goal for the future of UCR. “We’ve always felt that it’s important to start doing research as of day one at university.” UCR currently has courses about original research, but Dr. Oomen stressed a desire to expand those opportunities and to focus more on research connected to the environment, the community, and working with national and international companies in various fields.
Trevor Maloney, UCR class of 2015, is a Law and Politics major from West Palm Beach, FL, United States.
