English names only at services and departments

All services and departments of the TU/e will as of now only use their English names. That has been officially laid down in TU/e’s Administration and Management Regulations, to which the University Council gave its assent on Monday. Certain services were given names that are more in line with the range of tasks they now offer, the creators of the new names say.

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The acronyms DFEZ, DPO, DIZ, DH and IEC, which are so familiar to everyone at TU/e, will disappear. New English names and the appropriate acronyms have taken their place, and these are the names that people will have to use from now on. Also when applied in a Dutch language context.

Not all services had their original name converted literally from Dutch to English. For example, Dienst Financiële en Economische Zaken (DFEZ) will be known as Finance and Control (FC) from now on. Dienst Interne Zaken (DIZ) has been renamed Facility Management Center (FMC). The choice of a new name for Dienst Personeel en Organisatie (DPO) was an obvious one: Human Resource Management (HRM), and Dienst Huisvesting (DH) will be known as Real Estate (RE) from this point on. Cursor reported earlier that the Informatie Expertise Centrum (IEC) has been renamed Data Management and Library (DML).

Six services used an English name already: General Affairs (GA, formerly known as Dienst Algemene Zaken), Communication Expertise Center (CEC), Information Management and Services (IMS), Education and Student Affairs (ESA), Equipment & Prototype Center (EPC) and the Innovation Lab (IL).

Not an apt description

Hanneke Koppers, who issued an advice on the name changes in her capacity as director of the CEC, says that some names were not longer that valid any more for some of the services, nor did certain names correspond with the current level of expertise and the range of tasks of the service in question. The alterations, Koppers says, need to lead to a clearer picture of what a service can be expected to provide, as well as to a greater recognizability within the university. According to her, the new names are also more in line with the names given to similar services at other universities. In her advice, she also writes that a well-chosen name needs to be easy to remember and long lasting. ‘This means not having to choose a new name each year,’ the CEC director says.

It was also laid down in the Administration and Management Regulations that all departments may only use their English names from now on. This was the case already for three departments: Industrial Engineering & Innovation Sciences, Electrical Engineering, and Industrial Design. But it has now become official as well for Mathematics and Computer Science (Wiskunde en Informatica), Mechanical Engineering (Werktuigbouwkunde), Applied Physics (Technische Natuurkunde), Chemical Engineering and Chemistry (Scheikundige Technologie), Built Environment (Bouwkunde) and Biomedical Engineering (Biomedische Technologie).

The Supervisory Board is the last body to still speak out on the name change as laid down in the Administration and Management Regulations.

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