How does it feel to have been the first student of the Faculteit der Economische Wetenschappen of the RijksUniversiteit Limburg?

It was exciting just to be one of the first 100 students to start in 1984. Back then, you knew all the students and employees of the faculty.

My student number—E84001—was the consequence of being the only student with a last name beginning with “A.” This made it very easy to find my name on results lists! 
At the education office, led by Bea Staveaux (later Bea Smets), I was always called ‘E84001’—except for at my graduation, then she used my full name. 
Another anecdote related to the student number : The person who did after 1989 the verification of the voortgangstoest results used E84001 as dummy test, didn’t know that E84001 was a real student number. So I joked to him that I completed the most of these than all students; I even did them after graduation. 

What would you say were the benefits of being part of the first class in 1984?

As “student” pioneers, got to be involved in the education of the second, third, and fourth year students that followed us, because the subjects, stories, documentation, and textbooks were improved based on lessons learned from our experience. And the small number of students meant it was easy to get involved in research projects and gain a lot of hands-on learning. 

What might you do differently, if you were a student now?

I would study or participate in research abroad for at least three months. I had the opportunity to do that, but I didn’t because, at the time, I found my sports more important than the international experience (At that time as part of a team representing the Netherlands in racing international Cross  Country skiing marathons like the Engadin, Marcialonga, Koning Ludwiglauf.) I would also focus my study on a specific area with a few side steps instead of studying everything too broadly. Companies want specialist, not generalists. It is interesting to note that Ward’s interest in sports continued and he stayed connected to the UM.  In 2005, he ran the New York Marathon together with a team of Maastricht University alumni. 

Where are you today?

Since January 1990, I have worked at IBM Netherlands. Initially I was a functional designer and tester, and since then I’ve grown into my current role, supporting new employees and got a more consulting role both internally and externally.
I was involved the set-up, design and implementation of cloud based application portfolio used for connecting the IBM CE service support system with multiple logistics support systems.  
The last few years I’m responsible for the migration plans and data set-up for connecting countries to new Logic Service Providers and migration Countries from USA maintained parts logistics system to the EMEA maintained logistics system. This latter involved much discussions with the countries and ways to integrate their way of doing business into the more common way of doing the business.