Fellows Meeting Building Bridges between Academia and Industry
Building bridges between academics and the corporate world
For a number of years, the Faculty of Economics and Business (FEB) at KU Leuven has been organizing a meeting to strengthen ties between its academics on the one hand and the professional world, including companies and organizations of all kind, on the other hand. The purpose is to foster mutual cooperation, which can be expressed in different ways. At the so called ‘Fellows Meeting’ in Antwerp on February 6th 2025 Dean Professor Wilfried Lemahieu provided an overview of FEB’s composition and activities.
Nowadays, the Faculty of Economics and Business is one of the most important faculties at KU Leuven. It operates across 4 campuses in Flanders: Leuven, Brussels, Antwerp and Kortrijk. These campuses collectively welcome almost 10,000 students (9,868) of which almost 3,000 international students from 62 nationalities. The faculty has a staff of 1,086 members, including 206 professors, and maintains partnerships with no less than 210 international institutions. Dean Lemahieu acknowledges that it is quite a challenge to manage such a large multicampus faculty, but it works.
FEB comprises seven research departments in economics and business (see below) and offers a diverse range of programmes: eight Bachelor’s degrees (including two in English), 24 Master’s degrees (including ten in English), one Advanced Master’s programme (in English) and three PHD Programmes.
Additionally there are several interdisciplinary research centres with a thematic focus, such as VIVES (Centre for Regional Economics), ECOOM (Centre for Research and Development Monitoring), CELM (Centre of Expertise on Labour Market Monitoring ), LEER (Leuven Economics of Educational Research), LRISK (Insurance and Financial Risk Analysis), ATM (Access-to-Medicines), BEE (Behavioural Economics and Engineering), LICOS (Centre for Institutions and Economic Performance), and coming soon: Centre for Social Responsibility and Sustainability.
FEB is a business-oriented faculty. Each academic year more than 1,200 projects and internships are completed in collaboration with employers.
FEB is a business-oriented faculty. Each academic year more than 1,200 projects and internships are completed in collaboration with employers. The faculty produces about 2,100 graduates annually, with over 80% securing a job within 3 months of graduation. More than 1,700 employers offer job opportunities through FEB’s career platform.
Collaboration with businesses and industry professionals takes many forms, including internships, business projects within the curriculum, guest lectures, company visits, business cases, research projects and chairs, recruitment events and workshops, lifelong learning programmes, and job and internship postings on the faculty’s career platform.
Dean Lemahieu also emphasized the importance of the EQUIS Quality Label, which FEB obtained after several rigorous visitations by an international panel of deans and business representatives. He quoted the most recent visitation report: ‘Research is a particular strength of the School. The research output is excellent, and the quality of core faculty is very high. The School manages to continuously deliver a stream of high-quality publications in the top outlets in the respective fields. The research is fundamental and focused on long-term impact, yet the School has intensified its outreach to the world of practice mainly through its strong national links to the corporate world and the policy makers. The programmes are research-intensive and as such put the School in a strong position as a leading research-intensive Faculty. The School puts a lot of effort in research and the development of their Faculty. The Peer Review Team commends the research quality of the School to be outstanding.’
Dean Lemahieu also highlighted the quality of the alumni network, Ekonomika Alumni, which has been rated ‘above standard’ by the EQUIS Peer Review Team. This standard is set by the top business schools worldwide.
Following the keynote speech by Johan Thijs, CEO of KBC Group (see next article), the attending Fellows were divided in break-out sessions within one of the 7 research departments at FEB:
- Accounting, Finance, Insurance and Tax
- Decision Science and Information Management
- Economics
- Management, Strategy & Innovation
- Marketing
- Education Economics
- Work and Organisation Studies
The event concluded with an informal walking dinner.
Fa Quix
