Jan van der Valk
Director education Agriculture and Management
Jan was born on September 19, 1958, in Helmond. Following his high school years (MAVO, HAVO, Atheneum) in resp. Rotterdam, Amsterdam, Deventer, Lochem and Groningen, he went on to study Organisation Sociology at the State University Groningen (RUG) in 1982, and Business Studies at the same university in 1984. In this period he also finished his university teacher's degree in Economics and Statistics, graduating in 1989.
From 1987 on, he worked in the field of organisational, human resources and marketing consultancy and research with Van Houten & Partners Consultancy, Marktplan BV, Nederlandse Gasunie, and Industriebond FNV. During that time he also came in contact with Higher Vocational Education through the lessons he gave at an evening school for human resource staff of the Hogeschool Haarlem.
From 1990 onwards, he worked as a part-time tutor in Management and Sociology for the studies Nederlandse Landbouw (Dutch Agriculture) and Levensmiddelentechnologie (Food Technology) at the predecessor of Van Hall Larenstein.
In 1991, he made a complete switch to Higher Vocational Education as a tutor in Bedrijfskunde (Business Ecomics) at the then all new course Agrarische Bedrijfskunde (Agribusiness Economics), where he conducted several commercial assignments with the Business Center, apart from the developing and executing of courses.
From 1992 onwards, as a Course Director he was responsible for the founding of one of the first Master courses in The Netherlands, the Master of Science in Management (Agribusiness) in collaboration with the University of Greenwich Business School in London. Because of the success of this new, exciting possibility for ambitious Higher Vocational Educational students to follow a practice oriented academic study, in 1996 the MSC in Foodtechnology Management was developed on behalf of the HAS Den Bosch. Later on (1999), with the MSc Animal Welfare Management, the third variant was started.
In 2002, as Programme Manager of the English spoken international education IBMS (International Business and Management Studies), a collaboration between VHL, NHL en CHN, he helped found this course and led it during the start up phase.
In 2003 he returned to VHL as vice educational director Food & Business. In 2005 he became educational director Landbouw en Management (Agriculture and Management) with the goal to enhance the collaboration and synergy between the business economic and agriculture courses.
Both in business as in his personal life he has a great passion for entrepreneurship, which is shown in a.o. his involvement with activities for start-up businesses, such as BISON (fund for pre-seed loans), Stable (centre for start-up businesses Leeuwarden), and Dafne (centre for entrepreneurship with a.o. WUR and VHL).