Alumnus Else-Marie van den Herik is one of the two winners of the 2022 Lambers Student Excellence Award. Van den Herik, who graduated summa cum laude from both Erasmus School of Economics and Erasmus School of Law, was presented the award during the Dies Natalis ceremony on Tuesday 8 November. The Award, which is sponsored by ARK Fonds of Erasmus Trustfonds, contains a monetary value of 3,500 euros and a medal.
‘One of the very best students’
Else-Marie completed two bachelors and two masters in different disciplines (double degree programme Economics and Law) in six years, both with excellent results. She graduated cum laude from the bachelor’s degree Economics and Business Economics, with a GPA of 8.9, she graduated summa cum laude from the master’s degree Economics and Business, specialisation International Economics at Erasmus School of Economics, with a GPA of 9.2, and graduated cum laude from the master’s degree Commercial Law at Erasmus School of Law, with a GPA of 8.9.
Prof. Maarten Bosker of Erasmus School of Economics supervised both her bachelor and master thesis. As he mentions: ‘She showed to be an intelligent, motivated, hard-working student with excellent analytical skills.’ Her efforts resulted in excellent theses, both awarded with a 9.0. Bosker concludes: ‘Else-Marie is one of the very best students that I have had the pleasure to work with.’
Her thesis supervisor at Erasmus School of Law, Dr Piotr Wilinski, praises her ability to conduct high quality and independent academic research: ‘Else-Marie was able to answer the research questions in an outstanding, creative, and innovative way. Her argumentation was persuasive, to the point and easy to follow.’ A clear reflection of her excellence is that her thesis was awarded with an exceptional 9.5.
Findings of Else-Marie’s research now used in the Academic Skills course
Else-Marie also made exceptional contributions to education and research at Erasmus School of Economics as a teaching assistant, head teaching assistant, and research assistant. She worked as a teaching assistant and head TA for Academic Skills for more than four years – which already is an outstanding achievement on its own. As a research assistant, Else-Marie did research on free-riding in group projects.
More specifically, she investigated the preferences of bachelor 1 students for methods to detect and handle free-riding and published her work in the Journal of Marketing Education in 2021, under the supervision of Dr Tim Benning. The findings of her research are now used in the Academic Skills course. Her involvement in conducting experiments to avoid freeriding, helped greatly to improve smooth cooperation between students within groups and to enhance their cooperative learning skills.
Currently, Else-Marie is a research master’s student in economics at the Tinbergen Institute, the graduate school and research institute operated jointly by Erasmus School of Economics, University of Amsterdam and Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam.
- More information
For more information, please contact Ronald de Groot of Erasmus School of Economics and Erasmus School of Law, email:rdegroot@ese.eur.nl, phone: +31 6 53 641 846.
