Agrawal suggests to have the headlines or summaries of the news on the front page or in the rest of Cursor in English in the paper or on the Internet. “In this way I’m able to discuss the news with my colleagues. Now I often don’t have a clue what it is about. If you put some headlines in English that would be a start.”
Dragan Kostic´, Assistant Professor Robotics, remembers as well that he couldn’t understand the front page news of Cursor, when he arrived here as a PhD student eight years ago. “Back then I was interested in news which had to do with facilities in the university, job prospects and Dutch economy in general. I was interested in news which could have an impact on my life at that time.” Kostic´: “When I was a PhD I learned from Cursor about the new rules for knowledge immigrants. That was important news to me.” Agrawal: “I had to learn from my colleagues that the Virus Festival isn’t organized anymore. It was in big headlines on the Dutch pages but never mentioned on the English page.”

At this moment Kostic´ is interested in the future of the university and its policy, for example. How will TU/e develop? “But I’m pretty sure”, he says, “that it is not a topic of interest for an international Master student. The permanent staff who has an international background is supposed to understand Dutch. So If you have limited space and budget to publish news in English you should aim at international Master students and temporary staff, like PhD’s and Postdocs. Willem van Hoorn, from DPO and responsible for Internationalization, produces some statistics: “We have 350 to 400 international Master students, 600 PhD students and roughly 100 Postdocs. And of course international employees with a permanent contract.”

Nicole Ronald, a PhD student at Architecture, Building and Planning, admits she doesn’t read the English page. “I read Dutch well enough to read the Dutch part of Cursor. I get the headlines and I read the website Shift040 as well.” When she did read the English page before, she was annoyed that every week an international person was interviewed. “I would like to read on Dutch people too. We never see their stories on the English page, only on the Dutch pages. We’re not interested in the international community only.”

Topics
What are topics the panel members would like to read about? They mention cultural events in Eindhoven, hot places in town, university and student news, successes and failures of people at the university. Agrawal: “I would like to read about competitions and not find out afterwards.” Yang Yang, a PhD in Electronic Engineering, is interested in chances and opportunities in general. Kostic´ stresses: “When I open Cursor during lunch it is for relaxation. Therefore priority should be on cultural and social events, but at the same time I would like to be informed about the technological developments.”

Han Konings, chief editor of Cursor, thinks the panel meeting was very informative: “The quick wins could be to translate the leads into English, to add an Agenda in English and to put extra information on the website.”

The overall conclusion of the feedback panel was that international students and staff shouldn’t be set apart from the Dutch in Cursor as ‘we share the same interests’./.