- People
- 26/01/2022
Jos Coenen: “Yes, I've made a lot happen”
For IMS officer Jos Coenen, his last week at work is underway. How do we summarize a career spanning forty-eight years? It encompasses ten years of academic study, eight Philips years and thirty years as an employee of TU/e. Also in the mix are the founding of GEWIS and PUR, a couple of decisions later regretted, and the fact that centralization at TU/e has both upsides and downsides. He is unfailingly modest: “I didn't do it alone”.
Jos Coenen, the boy from Geleen, was a timid youngster (his own words) when he arrived at 'de Technische Hogeschool', the technical college of higher education, in 1974. There to study math, he found his métier as a gifted organizer. Something which came about, he says, because he was too shy to say 'no'. “I was a member of Taveres, the student table tennis association, and I got to help out during the Dutch student championship because I had passed all my exams during my first six months. When the chair of Taveres fell vacant, a couple of senior students said I should do it.” He proved himself capable in the role. He also had a seat on the board of the sports federation ESSF for two years, and he joined his department's board. Coenen was actively involved in all sorts of areas, and he qualified to teach in higher education. Now that he is retiring, he'll have plenty of time for his current hobbies of bridge and choir.
Intro Weeks
“In the nine-and-a-half years that I was a student, I was an Intro buddy eight times,” he says, and proudly too. When the students under his wing needed a study association, they only had to say it once and Jos jumped into action. “While I didn't join the board, myself and others arranged for a board to be set up and that a competition be held to decide on a name. GEWIS is the Dutch acronym for Community for Math and IT Students.”
Subject expert
Having completed his math studies, Coenen's next step at Philips was not unusual, but after eight years he was keen to return to the university. “At Industrial Engineering and Management Sciences, I started work as the literature expert for the discipline. It was my job to keep all the subject literature up to date for the departmental library. I have to say, I got a thorough grounding in the subject in the canteen at the Paviljoen, where I could talk to all the business experts. I really enjoyed getting to know other areas of the university besides the sports hall and the math department.”
The library had not really moved with the times. But, says Coenen, there was a good collection and he is certainly proud of the CD towers containing the full text of thousands of American journals. “This made us unique in the Netherlands and it drew external business experts to our library.” Coenen took steps into the digital world when he put this material online and further developed the pioneering VUBIS loan system, used worldwide. “With hindsight, I feel those were the best years of my career.”
Programming lecturer
The year 2000 marked the start of his work coordinating C++ and Java courses, which he also delivered to students and staff at the Math department. It was no easy matter staying abreast of the rapid changes in the programming world. “I found that the second line of the joke my colleagues used to tell applied to me. ‘If you know how to program: do! If you can’t program: teach! If you can’t teach: sell!’” When he felt he wasn't performing as well as he'd like to be, Coenen transferred back to the library, where he worked for close on a year. After this he became ICT coordinator at the Math department, and the most thrilling job of his 48-year career came his way.
Nerve-wracking but thrilling
For the umpteenth time, and the last, Coenen was working in the Main Building, the predecessor of Atlas. “As ICT coordinator I was given all kinds of facilities tasks. The most important was heading up the relocation project so that renovation work could start. That was nerve-wracking. I had colleagues who had sat at the same desk for twenty years, with their piles of books tottering on the edge...how could I motivate them to move to MetaForum?” On a couple of occasions the project ran into delays, and time and again Coenen found himself amazed, for instance at how hard it was to fulfill so many wishes for things like coat stands, white boards, meeting rooms for ICT staff, individual offices for mathematicians.
He took his worries home with him. It got to the stage where family and guests, he has four children with his wife Ria, were instructed to avoid mentioning the relocation or MetaForum, “because otherwise Jos will flip”. Eventually, all the mathematicians were out of the Main Building and Coenen, housed in MetaForum, could get back to his work in ICT. Which in reality meant until the next crisis came along: the centralization of ICT in Information Management & Services (IMS).
Mistake
At this point, Coenen made a decision he would come to regret. He took up the position of Chief Information Security Officer. With hindsight, he had bitten off more than he could chew. He tried it from Sinterklaas to Carnival, until he realized he was in over his head. “Real policing was needed, and I was operating at about the level of Officer Dribble in the Top Cat cartoon series.” He was able to return to IMS, but in the meantime his job had been filled by someone else. “Of course, I get that, but it did leave me feeling like a lost soul for a while. I managed projects, but I no longer felt as driven or ambitious as I would have liked.”
Employee participation
But his drive did revive early this century, when he was setting up PUR. “It used to be that the two factions on the University Council (UR) each had sections for academic staff, other employees and students. A legislative change required these bodies to spilt into a student faction and an employee faction. This prompted me to take steps to give the Council a Personnel faction with nine seats. “I am proud that we have become a proper interlocutor for the Executive Board. The input from employees has shifted from negatively critical to positively critical.”
Insight
Now that he is leaving TU/e, Monday is officially his last day at work, he is taking a moment to reflect on the changes in himself. “I now understand that older employees feel sidelined. In my time at Philips that was beyond my comprehension, but I'm not the idealist I used to be. I carry my fair share of life's wounds and I've lost the gusto to run with the crowd when the next big thing comes to town. It's a pity, but it's happened to me too.”
It's not that everything used to be better, he is well aware of that. “It is now much easier to innovate than it was when everything was decentralized. We used to find all kinds of improvised solutions but unless the order came down from the Executive Board, there was no way we could have managed something like, say, a digital signature. Needs that were felt lower down just weren't noticed.”
Parting tip
Coenen wishes everyone the best and, when asked, he has a parting tip for TU/e. “It would be lovely if a farewell party could be organized for each department, to say goodbye to all those people who have left without any fanfare over the past two years. A decent send-off should be possible from May onwards, don't you think?”
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