For The Safety Campus, a line has been drawn through the dream location: the Johan Willem Frisokazerne in Assen. Due to the expansion of Defense, there is no longer room for the campus.
So the initiators of the campus – NHL Stenden, University of Groningen, Noorderpoort, Alfacollege and DCTerra – would be sad, you might say. Well, no.
”Of course we would have liked to locate the campus there, but it is about more. I think it is more important the attractive effect of what Defense brings to the barracks. That is very good for us,” explains Richard Delger. He is director of the Thorbecke Academy, part of NHL Stenden.
Delger is referring to the arrival of the National Resilience Training in Assen. That is the Defense training for reservists, which is currently still located in Amsterdam. ”We offer a minor that you could see as the preliminary training. Instead of our students having to go to Amsterdam afterwards, they can simply stay in Assen. That could well lead to more students choosing us.”
The Safety Campus offers many more courses, all focused on resilience. Consider the security of government institutions, public organizations, SMEs, cybersecurity and more. Defense is also included as a customer. The fact that the Royal Military School remains located on the barracks site will certainly have a good effect for Assen Safety City, Delger thinks.
That is exactly why a place on the barracks grounds would be so ideal. However, the Safety Campus already put that plan on hold, because delivery could not be done quickly enough. The Thorbecke Academy is temporarily moving to the Industrieweg. The first students of Integrated Safety Science can go there immediately after the summer.
”We can stay there for at least five years. Do we have time to land and see how things are going with the growth in the number of students,” says Delger. “Moreover, we are neighbors of DCTerra there, which is also nice.”
In any case, there is no facility yet where all parts of the Safety Campus are gathered. That’s a shame, although according to the director you shouldn’t exaggerate that. ”A building should above all be pleasant. We have enough space with all the schools together. We’ll figure that out. The campus is more than a building.”