L.F.M. van Beeck (Lucas) MA

Police arrested two kids yesterday. One was drinking battery acid, the other was eating fireworks. They charged one and let the other one off. (Tommy Cooper)

Mr van Beeck joined the Amsterdam School of International Business in 2009 as a lecturer in Business English and as Co-Creative Enterprise coach. Prior to joining the AUAS, he worked at The Hague University of Applied Sciences, Tilburg University (Studium Generale), and at Eindhoven International Secondary School (IGCSE & International Baccalaureate) founded by Philips.

At AMSIB he has been a member of the English Department’s Curriculum Redesign team and he was initiator, author and reader of the first Great AMSIB Dictation (2014) for both students and staff. This is to be continued as a recurring annual event at the school to highlight the necessity of writing accurate, formal, professional business English.

The Netherlands is one of few world nations where a liberal tradition offers people from different cultural backgrounds opportunities to flourish, and AMSIB is in line with this tradition. The lecturers are as varied as the students, yet there is mutual respect and they succeed in communicating with each other in English as lingua franca, which is the language of the international business community. Proficiency in this language optimises global business opportunities. Mr van Beeck is happy to be able to make a contribution in this regard by helping AMSIB students hone their English skills.

Having experienced some highs and lows in business entrepreneurship first hand, he enjoys being a CCE coach: triggering students’ creativity, but also instilling a sense of perspective when tempers get frayed. Humour plays a key role in the quest for cooperation and efficiency.

Between his stints in education, he spent over a decade working as a package-tour manager on tour coaches for an upmarket British-Australian operator, traversing Central and Eastern Europe as far as Russia in the post cold war era. Off-season, he worked in South Africa co-running a lodge on the edge of the Drakensberg’s Blyde River Canyon, which sadly perished in the 2008 crisis when tourism suffered a major blow. During his time in the Mpumalanga province he set up a charity for a secondary school in Lydenburg’s Mashishing township. He worked intermittently as a certified translator and editor, notably for the Campion Press, Edinburgh, and BCG (Boston Consulting Group).

Mr van Beeck acquired his Master’s in English Language & Literature from Radboud University Nijmegen, NL, with minors in Art History and Educational Theory. During his studies he spent a year at Boston College Graduate School in the U.S., and a year at Oxford University (Harris Manchester College) in the U.K. To keep abreast of the latest developments in the field, he participated in the 2013 Train-the-Trainer programme at the Intercultural English Language Competence Center in Frankfurt, Germany. Indulging a passion for languages, Mr van Beeck attended courses to learn some Russian and Portuguese.