Highly Distinguished ERIM Promoter Award

Erasmus Research Institute of Management (ERIM) provides a special award for ERIM promoters who have supervised 25 PhD graduates. This denotes a career achievement for ERIM Promotors. To mark this special occasion, ERIM provides a distinguished award: ‘ERIM Praeceptor Doctorum Celeberrimus Award’ (in English: 'Highly Distinguished ERIM Promotor').

As of the start of 2015, there were only four faculty members recognised with this achievement in ERIM's history. On 9 June 2015, during an unnanounced ceremony, Marno Verbeek, ERIM Scientific Director and Monique van Donzel, ERIM Executive Director presented the award to Prof. dr. Henk Volberda with a short speech in English and Latin. The text of the award is entirely written in Latin and contains a collage of all 25 dissertations.

Professor Volberda witnessed his first PhD graduate conferred in 2000. Fifteen years later, on 8 January 2015, he saw his 25th PhD graduate conferred. Dr. Saeed Khanagha, defended his dissertation entitled Dynamic Capabilities for Managing Emerging Technologies: Organizational and Managerial Antecedents of Effective Adoption of Cloud Computing.

Professor Volberda is the second Rotterdam School of Management, Erasmus University faculty member to receive this award, after Frans van den Bosch, who received it in November 2008. Two Erasmus School of Economics, Erasmus University faculty members, Professor Philip Hans Franses and Professor Rommert Dekker received the award in 2011.