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Foreign student ignores KIVI NIRIA
18 oktober 2007 - The pressure group for engineers KIVI NIRIA at the TU/e attracts few foreign students. Less than ten percent of the number of student members is of non-Dutch descent, although they too can profit from the knowledge and activities of this organization.

“Members of the KIVI NIRIA have a large network they can use”, says Marty Hermann-Kievits, desk manager KIVI NIRIA, section South. “The pressure group has 28,000 members nationwide, including 1,626 students. Foreign students can also use this network when looking for an internship, a place to graduate or to work. Moreover, the association has contacts with various engineers’ associations abroad. Via the section Young KIVI NIRIA students the association is a member of European Young Engineers (EYE), an organization that brings students and persons recently graduated from different countries in touch with each other.”
In addition, the students executive, Young KIVI NIRIA Students of the section Eindhoven, regularly sets up activities such as a CV workshop and ‘speed-dating’, where students can talk to enterprises.
Dutch is the main language used during these activities. However, Hermann-Kievits does not consider it a problem if no fluent Dutch is spoken. “Nearly everybody in the Netherlands with a job at academic level speaks English. Besides, I think that HR managers of big companies go through CVs in English as easily as through those that are in Dutch.”
The reason why so few foreign students are members has not been investigated. It could be due to the linguistic barrier, suspects Hermann-Kievits; KIVI NIRIA provides its information in brochures and its website mainly in Dutch. The pressure group does acknowledge that there is a national demand for the provision of English-language information, says Nathalia Memeo, employee for KIVI NIRIA Nederland. She reports that work is underway on an abbreviated English version of the site that should be available in the spring of 2008./.

The KIVI NIRIA is located in room 0.25 of the Hoofdgebouw.