Frederic and Jan
Ever the Twain Shall Meet
Anne Cramer '01
Issue date: 9/6/00 Section: People
- Page 1 of 1
You may or may not be aware that there is a special exchange program that Cornell shares with the University of Chicago and Katholieke Universiteit te Leuven/Universite Catholique de Louvain in Belgium. This program sends several Belgians per year to the US to complete an MBA from Cornell or Chicago. These students enter into the second year class and spend the whole year amongst us. I'd like to introduce you to this year's pair of Belgians, Frederic Adriaens and Jan Grevendonk.
Did you notice that I named Frederic's and Jan's school in both Dutch and French? Well, hang in there, because this may get complicated. Frederic is from the French-speaking portion of Belgium and Jan is from the Dutch-speaking part (although both state that they are from "outside Brussels"). Each speaks the other's language. And theoretically, they both attend the same school. However, there are two campuses, one that instructs in Dutch located in Leuven, and one that instructs in French located in Louvain La Neuve, a town constructed for the sole purpose of splitting the university in two.
The university is not all that is divided. I won't go into the political details (although I suggest you chat with Frederic and Jan about it at some point because it's very interesting), but Belgium has separate governments in French and Dutch, as well as dubbing versus sub-title issues that must keep the movie and television industry hopping over there.
Luckily these two get along and actually share many common interests. In fact, their academic and career choices reveal these commonalities, while also reflecting the odd, mirror image quality of everything described above. Frederic studied engineering for five years and added an extra year in business economics. Jan studied business for four years and added an extra year in "commercial engineering". Both then went into strategy and ERP consulting, Frederic for three years at Andersen and Jan for five years at PriceWaterhouseCoopers. They only just met each other during the application process for this program.
Both Frederic and Jan have already made themselves at home at the Johnson School, actively participating in Orientation and JOE. When asked how it's all going for them, the reply was "so far, so good," which isn't bad at all. I hope you get a chance to get to know Frederic and Jan. Even though I made them sound like twins separated at birth in this article, they are actually quite different, each with his unique interests. Frederic used to be heavily involved in Scouting, and likes travel and sports, particularly mountain biking and tennis. Jan has lived abroad in several countries including Spain, Greece and Luxembourg, and he loves learning languages and Latin American music and dancing. Merci and Bedankt, guys.
Did you notice that I named Frederic's and Jan's school in both Dutch and French? Well, hang in there, because this may get complicated. Frederic is from the French-speaking portion of Belgium and Jan is from the Dutch-speaking part (although both state that they are from "outside Brussels"). Each speaks the other's language. And theoretically, they both attend the same school. However, there are two campuses, one that instructs in Dutch located in Leuven, and one that instructs in French located in Louvain La Neuve, a town constructed for the sole purpose of splitting the university in two.
The university is not all that is divided. I won't go into the political details (although I suggest you chat with Frederic and Jan about it at some point because it's very interesting), but Belgium has separate governments in French and Dutch, as well as dubbing versus sub-title issues that must keep the movie and television industry hopping over there.
Luckily these two get along and actually share many common interests. In fact, their academic and career choices reveal these commonalities, while also reflecting the odd, mirror image quality of everything described above. Frederic studied engineering for five years and added an extra year in business economics. Jan studied business for four years and added an extra year in "commercial engineering". Both then went into strategy and ERP consulting, Frederic for three years at Andersen and Jan for five years at PriceWaterhouseCoopers. They only just met each other during the application process for this program.
Both Frederic and Jan have already made themselves at home at the Johnson School, actively participating in Orientation and JOE. When asked how it's all going for them, the reply was "so far, so good," which isn't bad at all. I hope you get a chance to get to know Frederic and Jan. Even though I made them sound like twins separated at birth in this article, they are actually quite different, each with his unique interests. Frederic used to be heavily involved in Scouting, and likes travel and sports, particularly mountain biking and tennis. Jan has lived abroad in several countries including Spain, Greece and Luxembourg, and he loves learning languages and Latin American music and dancing. Merci and Bedankt, guys.