Oeuvre award for Theo Thiadens

It was a complete circus

"I have been a lecturer twice. Always at an Applied University headed by Ad Vissers. Ad had the following vision: "My students have to feel the subject of management of ICT and lecturers are there to open doors for them. Research merely for the sake of it, is not what we need." During my first job as a lecturer, from 2004-2007, about 240 students interviewed some 64 businesses. The information was stored in a database in which everyone could see what kind of IT infrastructure, what kind of applications and what kind of IT management an organisation had. The database was accessible via the internet. We also made a tool with example organisations. Our students really got to know how things worked in reality. Oh yes, almost forgot, we also organised congresses, at which one could get an ITIl, ASL and BISL certificate. It was a complete circus

Teachers and students, to the top together

"Together with the teachers of Fontys, I defined topics such as Cloud computing, the green Calculation centre, chain automation and management, portfolio management etc. Again, we involved the students in all of this. Over 50 businesses were interviewed by, in total, 240 students. 16 businesses held presentations at 8 different congresses, at which we would always present the results of a study. Having learned from past experiences, we published some 25 articles in Informatie, IT service management and Finance and control; we published 8 books and 15 international articles. We had also managed to get a monthly spot for a column in IT service management!

Theo was always busy

His colleagues from Fontys Hogeschool ICT remember Theo well. "You'd know it straight away if Theo was in the building. Everybody would leave their desks, enthusiastically", says Adri Cornelissen. "Theo was really good at what he did, IT governance. That's still very high on the agenda of Fontys, because it's still not organised all that well. Together with Theo we have developed a model and his mental legacy is still being used intensively. You could say that Theo is still very much among us at the Fontys organisation. His insights are really starting to settle. Theo would also involve his students in carrying out research. He was a hard worker and would take up all kinds of tasks. Theo was never preoccupied with putting himself on the map, to the contrary, cooperation and celebrating successes together were of great importance to him (and the latter was well taken care of with numerous diners). In short: Theo was always busy, fantastic!

Word of thanks to Theo

Theo would like to stress the following: "Continue what you're doing and get into contact with schools and students and let them get acquainted actively with IT governance. Teachers and students are learning so much from this! Thanks again for the award and thank the directors of the foundation for me for awarding me with this prize. I hope a possible successor will be given the same opportunities as my students, my colleagues and I were