Assistant Professor Annemieke Klijn wrote an interesting report about the role of the University Fund Limburg/SWOL in the establishment of Maastricht University. With her permission, we will present the report to you, divided into six short chapters.
‘‘SWOL entered a new phase. Its mission as a lobby organization to secure a university for Limburg was accomplished. But what was to be its future raison d’être? Initially SWOL concentrated on serving as a partner for the committee working on preparing the establishment of the new medical faculty in Maastricht (Commissie Voorbereiding Achtste Medische Faculteit). SWOL provided active and practical support to this project ‘within the context of the university to be founded’. For example, SWOL financially secured the position of the 50 people who in 1974 enrolled in the medical curriculum and who could not formally be called ‘students’ because the medical faculty formally started out as an experiment, without formal legal basis. After the official establishment of State University Limburg in 1976, SWOL decided to focus primarily on promoting its further development. In 1978, for instance, SWOL set up the Dr. Tans rotating chair in ‘educational methodology in health care’. Although SWOL has meanwhile changed its name into Limburg University Fund/SWOL (Universiteitsfonds Limburg/SWOL), it sustains its original objective by continuing to promote both the international orientation of Maastricht University and its interplay with the social and cultural life within the province of Limburg.”
Text: Annemieke Klijn (Assistant Professor & Curator Art and Heritage Committee, Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences, Maastricht University)
Image: Opening ceremony State University Limburg on 9-1-1976 with Fons Baeten, queen Juliana and Charles van Rooy, photographer: Jos Nelissen