Radboud University (abbreviated as RU, Dutch: Radboud Universiteit, formerly Katholieke Universiteit Nijmegen) is a publicresearch university located in Nijmegen, the Netherlands. RU has seven faculties and more than 24,000 students.[3]
Established in 1923, Radboud University has consistently been included in the top 150 of universities in the world by four major university ranking tables. As of 2020, it ranks 105th in the Shanghai Academic Ranking of World Universities.[4] Internationally, RU is known for its strong research output. In 2020, 391 PhD degrees were awarded, and 8,396 scientific articles were published.[5] To bolster the international exchange of academic knowledge, Radboud University joined the Guild of European Research-Intensive Universities in 2016.
Radboud University's coat of arms was designed at the time of the founding of the university by the goldsmith workshop of the Brom family in Utrecht. The lower part represents the coat of arms of the Catholic Church in the Netherlands. The dove in the upper part of the coat of arms is the symbol of the Holy Spirit. The entire shield is surmounted by the Imperial Crown of the Holy Roman Empire because Nijmegen was once home to Frankish King Charlemagne. Underneath the coat of arms one finds the university's motto "In Dei Nomine Feliciter",[7] meaning "happily in the name of God". The coat of arms is used on most of the university's official documents, including the university's bachelor, master and PhD certificates. For 2023 a special version of the coat of arms was designed to celebrate Radboud University's 100 year anniversary.
The establishment of a university in the city of Nijmegen goes far back. The first University of Nijmegen was founded in 1655 as the Kwartierlijke Academie van Nijmegen. Students developed their skills in the traditional fields of theology, medicine and law. Although the university had its successes, the Kwartierlijke Academie terminated around 1680. The university was unable to recover from successive outbreaks of the plague and the French invasion of the Netherlands in 1672.
After several attempts to establish a new university in Nijmegen, the current Radboud University Nijmegen was established in 1923 under the name Katholieke Universiteit Nijmegen (Catholic University of Nijmegen). It was founded by the Saint Radboud Foundation, a network of bishops that wished to emancipate Catholic intellectuals in the Netherlands. At the time, Dutch Roman Catholics were disadvantaged and occupied almost no higher posts in governmental and scientific institutions. The establishment of a university was seen as a possible stepping stone for these individuals.
The official opening of the Catholic University of Nijmegen in 1923. The academic beadle walks with the new professors to Saint Ignatius' Church.
When the Catholic University of Nijmegen was founded, every student automatically became part of student corporation N.S.V. Carolus Magnus [nl], named after the Frankish king, Charlemagne, who used to reside in Nijmegen in the Middle Ages. This organization was set up to speak for student needs and to organize an annual induction ceremony. It also aimed at attaining the same status as other corporations in the well-known Dutch student cities of Leiden, Delft and Groningen. To the horror of the Catholic University's management, Carolus Magnus also pursued the same liberalelitist character as these other corporations. Still, it continued developing and students eagerly participated. In the 1920s it produced its own sociëteiten: male students became part of Gentleman's Roland Society (1928) and female students joined the Ladies Society Lumen Ducet (1929). Some students of these sociëteiten banded together in smaller communities called disputen.
University in times of war
The first years after the establishment of 1923 were quite successful for the Catholic University of Nijmegen, but during the Second World War the young university encountered serious difficulties. Many prominent members were lost, among them the anti-Nazi professors Robert Regout and Titus Brandsma who were deported to Dachau concentration camp and died there. As the war progressed, the university was more severely curtailed in its freedoms. The German Sicherheitsdienst (security service) removed so-called "anti-German works" from the university library. In addition, professors could only be appointed after approval by the Nazi Department of Education, Science and Cultural Protection. Such measures aimed at eventually eliminating religious institutions of higher education. There would be no place for a Catholic university in a nazified Netherlands.
In March and April 1943, the conflict with the Nazi occupying forces reached a boiling point. The occupiers demanded that all students in the Netherlands sign a declaration of loyalty. If they did not, they were not allowed to continue their studies and had to work in Germany as forced laborers. However, students in Nijmegen showed to be resistant to the German demands. At the risk of his own life, law student Jozef van Hövelleven launched a widespread campaign to get as many students as possible not to sign.
The university's rector magnificus at that time, Bernard Hermesdorf, decided to show solidarity with students like Jozef van Hövell. As the only Dutch rector in the Netherlands he refused, for "reasons of principle", to distribute pre-printed loyalty statements to his students. Although heroic, Hermesdorf's refusal led to extreme anger among the occupying Nazi forces. On 5 May 1943, the Germans demanded all Nijmegen's non-signatories of the loyalty statement to report to Ommen within 24 hours to be put to work in Germany. If they did not, their families would be held responsible. These circumstances left rector magnificus Bernard Hermesdorf with no choice but to close the doors of the university as of 11 April 1943, pending better times. Eventually, only 83 students decided to report to the Germans in Ommen. Most of the students went into hiding, scattered across the Netherlands. The great spider in the web during that time was university moderator Bernard van Ogtrop, who traveled all over the country to visit students from Nijmegen in hiding. He wrote circulars, took care of a wide-ranging correspondence, and ran a parcel service and thus managed to keep many people's spirits up. The university was closed, but thanks to Van Ogtrop it continued to exist, if only in the minds of the students.
1945 – 2000
When the war ended in 1945, the university infrastructure had been largely destroyed, but students still returned to their alma mater in dribs and drabs. Classes officially resumed again in March 1946, but because many university buildings had been bombed during the war, a dire need for new facilities existed. With the purchase of the Heyendaal estate, the university got its own campus in a green setting less than a fifteen-minute bike ride from the Nijmegen city center. In 1951, the Faculty of Medical Sciences was the first faculty to move to Heyendaal. Soon, other faculties followed. By 1988, all faculties had moved to Heyendaal. The move to a new campus also with a rise in students attending the Catholic University of Nijmegen. Since the end of the war, student numbers steadily rose from 3,000 in 1960 to 15,000 in 1980.
The period between 1960 and 1975 is often generally described as the "Age of Student Unrest". Not only did the student population in Nijmegen rise exponentially, it had also become more diverse, left-leaning and less elitist. Next to that, the hippie movement had reached the city which caused many students to desire a more democratic student life. Umbrella organization Carolus Magnus became increasingly bloated and lost connection with the members of sociëteiten and disputen that began to operate more independently. It was not the beloved corporation it used to be and students criticized the mandatory membership of Carolus Magnus. Therefore, the organization slowly became more concerned with administrative duties than organizing community activities. In 1966 Carolus Magnus ceased to exist in its traditional sense. From that moment on, students were free to choose which association they joined and which not. In the 1980s and 1990s many other kinds of student associations were established in Nijmegen, including evangelical-Christian association Navigators, egalitarian association Ovum Novum, and alternative student association Karpe Noktum.
2000 – now
As an indication of its evolving relationship with the Bishops' Conference of the Netherlands and to appear less sectarian, the university's executive council changed the university's name in 2004 to the Radboud University Nijmegen after SaintRadboud of Utrecht, a medieval bishop. Tensions continued between the university's executive council and the bishops' conference over the secularizing direction of the university. The repeated nomination of non-Catholics and non-practicing Catholics to the executive council, which the bishops' conference would not approve, exacerbated tensions. In response to a decision to open a Transgender Care Center at the university's medical center, the bishops' conference revoked the designation Catholic from the university in November 2020. Accordingly, the university lost its eligibility to receive church subsidies and its right to identify as Roman Catholic. The university appealed to the Holy See, and in November 2022 the pope's Dicastery for Culture and Education ruled that the bishops' conference could remove the designation "Catholic" from the executive council but not from the university as a whole.[8]
Faculties
Radboud University is organized in seven faculties that offer programmes and courses in the fields of humanities, social sciences, natural sciences, medical sciences, law, management, philosophy, theology and religious studies. Each faculty (cf., College in the USA or School in Europe) is a formal grouping of academic degree programmes, schools and institutes, discipline areas, research centres, and/or any combination of these drawn together for educational purposes.
Faculty of Arts
Faculty of Law
Faculty of Medical Sciences
Nijmegen School of Management
Faculty of Philosophy, Theology and Religious Studies
Faculty of Science
Faculty of Social Sciences
Campus
Heyendaal castle (now serving as the Faculty Club of the university) is of old the center of Heyendaal estate, where later on most Radboud University buildings have been established.A view of the Radboud University law faculty in the summer
Radboud University is noted for its green campus, often listed among the most attractive in the Netherlands. The campus is located in the southern Heyendaal estate of Nijmegen and houses 7 faculties that conduct teaching and research. In addition to these faculties, the campus also hosts the Max Planck Institute for Psycholinguistics, a world class research centre devoted to the understanding of human language and communication.
Featured prominently on the northwest side of the university's Heyendaal campus is the Heyendaal castle. It borders the Radboud University Medical Center, a large teaching hospital located on the campus, which is linked to the university's medical department. Bordering the university hospital is the Huygens Building, which houses the Faculty of Natural Sciences. At the south end of the campus next to the Radboud Sports Centre (RSC), one finds the Erasmus Tower which houses the Faculty of Arts and Philosophy, Theology and Religion. The Erasmus Tower and the RSC border the Elinor Ostrom building, which is home to the School of Management and also encompasses the political sciences and economics faculty staff. On the other side of the Erasmus Tower, a number of general lecture halls is located along with the campus pub and bookshop. Beyond this area, in the southwest of the campus, one finds the modern Maria Montessori building, home to the Faculty of Social Sciences, and the Grotius building, home to the Faculty of Law. In the most southern part of the campus, the monumental Jesuit Berchmanianum monastery can be found which houses the university's general services staff and will serve as its auditorium.
In 2017, a SPAR minimarket was opened in the Erasmus building which provides students with snacks and accessories. The university campus borders the campus of the HAN University of Applied Sciences, which in turn is located next to Heyendaal train station. Frequent shuttle buses connect the university to Nijmegen Central Station and the city centre.
Academics
Education
An aerial view of the Huygens buildings of the Faculty of Natural Sciences, with the Erasmus Tower in the back
Radboud University enrols over 22,000 students in about one hundred study programs (about 50 bachelor's and 50 master's programs).[9] As of April 2021, the university offers 34 international master's programs taught in English and several more taught in Dutch.[10] There are nine bachelor's programs taught fully in English: American Studies, Artificial Intelligence, Biology, Chemistry, Computing Science, International Economics & Business, International Business Administration, English Language and Culture, Philosophy, Politics and Society and Molecular Life Sciences. Communication and Information Studies, History, Psychology and Arts and Culture Studies offer English-language tracks. All other bachelors are in Dutch, although most of the required literature is in English. Some exams, papers and even classes may be in English as well, despite the programs being Dutch-taught. All master's programs have been internationally accredited by the Accreditation Organization of the Netherlands and Flanders (NVAO).
International master's programs
All English-taught master's programmes are research-based programmes. They are taught within the Faculties of Arts, Law, Social Sciences, Medical Sciences, Sciences and Philosophy, Theology and Religious Studies, besides the Interfaculty Research school and the Nijmegen School of Management.[11]
Radboud University has been named best broad university in the Netherlands for the past seven consecutive years.[16] The physics department is considered top tier. A recent accomplishment is its contribution to the first picture of a black hole.[17] The Faculty of Law is nationally unrivaled in its research in business and law,[18] and retains strong international ties with other prominent research institutions, such as Bologna, Nice and Oxford. The Faculty of Law's European Law School and Notarial Law departments are considered best in class in the Netherlands,[19][20] just as the Political Sciences, Sociology and Theology programmes in their respective fields.[16]
Radboud Excellence Initiative
The Radboud Excellence Initiative was created with the dual purposes of attracting talents from every academic field to Radboud University while strengthening international bonds between universities worldwide. The initiative is a joint enterprise of both Radboud University and Radboud University Nijmegen Medical Center. It provides two routes by which a researcher may come to Radboud University. Promising researchers who have completed their doctorate between two and eight years earlier at the time of nomination may be nominated for a fellowship whereas those researchers who are more established in their discipline may be nominated for a professorship.[21]
Student life
Student associations
Emblem of the traditional student association Carolus Magnus
Radboud University offers students the opportunity to join various ethnic, cultural and political organizations, along with numerous honor societies, special interest groups and socially focused student societies.
Overview of the largest student associations in Nijmegen
Student association
Date of establishment
Members
Type of Association
N.S.V. Carolus Magnus
1 February 1928
(revival in 1973)
600
Traditional
N.S.R.V. Phocas
1 May 1947
550
Rowing-oriented
N.S.H.C. Apeliotes
8 October 1987
500
Field hockey-oriented
N.S.Z.V. De Loefbijter
23 February 1967
75
Sailing-oriented
A.E.G.E.E. Nijmegen
22 August 1986
85
International
N.S.N. (Navigators)
2 November 1989
215
Christian
V.G.S.N. Thesaurum Quaeritans
21 March 1990
53
Reformed (Liberated)
N.S.V. Ovum Novum
20 May 1990
630
Egalitarian
K.S.N. – Katholieke Studenten Nijmegen
21 August 2000
23
Catholic
A.S.V. Karpe Noktem
7 December 2004
140
Alternative
C.S.F.R. Quo Vadis
27 October 2009
50
Reformed
N.S.R.V. Obelix
1 May 1970
100
Rugby-oriented
Study associations
Lately study associations have overtaken part of the role that student associations like Carolus Magnus used to play. These study associations are related to individual degree programs and are open to international students as well. Study associations don't have initiation rituals and regularly meet for fun-related, as well as study-related activities. Some examples of study associations are the study association for computing science and information sciences students (Thalia), the study association for history students (Excalibur), the study association for psychology students (SPIN), and the study association for Business Administration students (Synergy).
Campus publications
Radboud University's independent university media platform, Vox, intended for students and staff, publishes daily material online and delivers hard copy magazines several times a year. Its paper magazine is distributed on campus for free. Vox at Radboud University also produce an independent student magazine that appears seven times a year: the Algemeen Nijmeegs Studentenblad(ANS).
Athletics
Radboud University offers many facilities for sports at the Radboud Sports Centre (RSC) a part of campus where students are welcomed 7 days a week to partake in a variety of at least 80 different sports. In addition to the facilities of the Radboud Sports Centre, Radboud University also boasts more than 35 student sports associations such as the Radboud Rangers (baseball), Obelix (rugby), Apelliotes (hockey), FC Kunde (soccer), Phocas (rowing) and De Loefbijter (sailing).
Harald E.L. Prins (1976, Doctorandus) anthropologist, ethnohistorian, documentary filmmaker and expert witness on indigenous rights in United States and Canadian courts, distinguished Professor of Anthropology at Kansas State University
Frans de Waal (1970, MSc) – biologist and primatologist known for his work on the behavior and social intelligence of primates.
^Judith van Beukering (red.) 80 jaar KU Nijmegen – 80 objecten. Tachtig jaar Katholieke Universiteit Nijmegen in voorwerpen van wetenschap, geschiedenis en kunst (Nijmegen 2003) 15.
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