Test Wilbert

To request an ERNA account for a student assistant, temporary worker, external service provider or guest, please use the account request form on the Intranet.

In the first year you will benefit from our student mentor programme, designed to help you get used to university life in the international setting offered by IBA.Well-trained second-year IBA students will guide a group of roughly 20 first-year students through the first part of the year, through a variety of activities. Student advisers are there to help students with any problems they might encounter as students, both study related and personal.

A range of introduction activities will be offered in August and September by both the University, the programme and the Erasmus Student Network ESN. The IBA Freshmen Weekend is held during the last week of August.

There is little difference between the two programmes in terms of content, quality or delivery.

• IBA is taught in English, BA is taught in Dutch
• IBA is international, pproximately 60% of IBA students come from outside of the Netherlands
• IBA has selective admission, BA is open for all qualified applicants

When looking for the most appropriate funding scheme for your research idea, it is important to bear in mind the following:

• Do the objectives and the criteria of the funding scheme match with my research proposal?
• Which activities are eligible for funding and which are not?
• Is my organisation eligible to apply?
• What is the financial contribution from my department and will my department agree to cover these costs?
• Is the deadline feasible?
• Are there disadvantages to applying? For example, the time and effort needed or additional budget required from the funding organisation.

Example of a cost-benefit analysis

If you need help to answer the questions above, do not hesitate to contact Veerle van Laere. 

Check if your proposal needs to be approved and signed by the head of your department, by the Dean or even by the Executive Board of the EUR, which has very specific mandate rules:

EUR mandate rules

Be aware of these mandate rules, and make sure to submit a draft proposal and budget for endorsement and signing by the Executive Board at least 10 days before your actual deadline. The Executive Board needs to carry out a legal, financial and administrative check (the ‘FLAT’ check) before endorsing your application.

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If you decide to prepare a co-operation project in which you work with national or international partners, it is important to give yourself plenty of time before the deadline to organise your consortium.

You need to consider:

• Who will be the project co-ordinator or main participant? The project co-ordinator normally takes the lead in the submission process. They decide on the general project outline, the number and content of the work packages and the overall budget. The co-ordinator is usually also responsible for managing and co-ordinating the project and signing the official contract once the application has been endorsed. If you decide to become the project co-ordinator, you must devote a considerable amount of time to co-ordination and management activities. However, it’s possible to outsource some of these project management and secretarial activities to Project Desk. The Project Desk team has plenty of experience with project management and can monitor progress and assist with the completion and submission of periodic reports. The Project Desk team can also estimate the budget for these project management costs.
• Who is responsible for each task or responsibility? It is important to make a clear description of tasks and responsibilities and to make sure each partner is aware of their contribution – and is willing to commit to doing it. It is good practice to draft a handbook of your management procedures, plus your legal, financial, administrative and reporting requirements for the funded project. If RSM is to be the co-ordinator of a large co-operation project, then Project Desk can help you compose the handbook, which can then be distributed to consortium members at the kick-off meeting. You can also use such a handbook as a formal way to deliver management activities. Ask to see examples of such handbooks at Project Desk.
• Who holds the consortium agreement and intellectual property rights? You are strongly recommended to set out a consortium agreement for your co-operation project. In many cases such an agreement is compulsory. The consortium agreement is a contract made between project partners. It stipulates all arrangements and obligations, and assigns intellectual property rights. Project Desk has a legal consultant who can advise you and give you a template to work from. More information about the consortium agreement is in Consortium Agreement.

Accreditation is an official process that a programme must go through in order to obtain a seal of approval. Most national governments have an official accreditation process which ensures that programmes meet specifically defined quality standards. In the Netherlands the national accrediting body is the Accreditation Organisation of The Netherlands and Flanders (NVAO). All of the programmes offered by RSM have been accredited by the NVAO.

RSM accepts applicants with a bachelor degree obtained at an accredited University of Applied Sciences in the Netherlands (HBO), Austria, Belgium, Finland, Germany, Sweden and Switzerland. These students are required to first follow a pre-master year at RSM.

The grant agreement stipulates the requirements and obligations which need to be respected, and explains the procedures for payment and reporting. It is important to read the grant agreement carefully, so that there are no surprises during the execution and completion of the project. In some cases it is possible to negotiate the rights and obligations in the grant agreement before signing it, just as you can do with a FP7 co-ordination project. If RSM is the co-ordinator of the project, then a member of Project Desk team can accompany you to Brussels to help you negotiate with the grant provider about the rights and obligations. RSM is also obliged to inform other partners about the rights and obligations in the grant agreement.

Project Desk can tell you and any project partners or consortium about any rights and obligations in the grant agreement, and can also organise an internal or external kick-off meeting to do this. There’s more information about this in Inform researcher: Organise internal and external kick-off meeting.

If the grant project is awarded by means of a grant agreement then this agreement frequently has to be drawn up within a short period. Project Desk can ensure that the grant agreement is signed in good time by the appropriate and authorized signatory. The Erasmus University has very specific mandate rules. More information about these mandate rules is given in EUR mandate rules.

As in every phase of grant projects, the final phase – completion – also has its own administrative requirements. Project Desk will guide and assist you in carrying out these final tasks.

Make checklist and plan for project completion

At the end of a project, the grant issuing body will usually set requirements about the way the grant project should be finalised. In many cases it will only make a final payment after you have submitted all the required information. The final payment will have to be processed; it will need to be sent on to partners. In some cases money will be reclaimed from partners who have underspent their budget. You must also submit your final scientific and financial reports, and organise and submit a final audit, if required. Project Desk will co-ordinate this procedure for large consortium projects where RSM is co-ordinator. In smaller or individual projects, Project Desk can draft the checklist for you. In this case, you will need to decide who will complete each task to complete the project.

Signalling requirements in (grant, consortium) agreement after project completion

Your consortium may have an agreement that stipulates requirements to be fulfilled after the project has ended, for instance, keeping track of former PhD students after they leave RSM. Project Desk can help you here, and can co-ordinate the whole process in large consortium projects where RSM is co-ordinator.

Lessons learned for future projects

Each new project comes with new challenges and new lessons. In order to learn from these experiences,  Project Desk will collect the lessons learned by its own project managers and will aim to retrieve helpful information from the researchers who are in charge of grant projects. From small to large scale projects, we aim to use the new information and know how to develop best practices. These will be shared with researchers and support staff in new projects.

Organise internal and external closing (if RSM is coordinator) meeting

Project Desk can organise your closing meeting at the end of a project. The agenda will include: general evaluation; lessons learned; procedure for finalising the project according to grant stipulations; setting final tasks for the researcher, project manager, and other support staff.

For large consortium projects where RSM is the co-ordinator, an external closing meeting should include all project partners.  The administrative Project Manager from Project Desk will organise this meeting for you.

Internal archiving of project documentation

All documents and contracts for all funded projects and contract research are kept in Project Desk’s electronic archiving system. Project Control maintains a paper archive for all financial information. The funding body usually requires project documentation to be kept for auditing purposes for between five and seven years after the project has been finalised. Project Desk will make sure your project documents are archived as required.

Finding the right funding scheme for your research proposal can be a painstaking task. ERIM has developed a range of tools and services that may help you find the right funding scheme.

During the programme, students can take language electives such as Spanish, French, German, and Chinese, offered by the Language & Training Centre. You can also receive 5 ECTS towards your IBA elective credits upon completion of 2 language courses, which may provide another nice incentive to learn the local language. For more information, please see www.eur.nl/ltc.

Submission regulations for project proposals often require certain documents, such as an institutional guarantee, a letter of intent, a host commitment letter or a partner agreement. Veerle van Laere can check if your proposal needs to be accompanied by any of these documents. She can also check the documents are signed and delivered by the right person, according to the appropriate mandate.

The Erasmus University has very specific mandate rules. For more information about mandate rules, please read chapter EUR mandate rules.

If you need support or have questions, contact Veerle van Laere.

The language that people consider as their native language or mother tongue can be spoken at different levels. When you are born and educated in a country where you also speak the same language with your parents and friends, you are typically fluent in both speaking and writing. If you only speak this language at home and never received any formal education in this language however, your language proficiency in writing and/or speaking is probably below the C2 level that is considered as fully fluent.

MSc programmes at RSM only start once a year in September. There is not January or February intake.

The application for the new academic year opens in October, the previous year. 

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