The story
Six West Flemish colleges merged in 1995 to form Howest: the Hoger Pedagogisch Instituut (the Normaalschool) and the Instituut Simon Stevin in Bruges, HIEPSO and the Provinciale Industriële Hogeschool (PIH) in Kortrijk, the Vesaliusinstituut in Ostend, and the Hoger Instituut voor Sociale Studies (HISS) in De Haan, Belgium. About 2,800 students were enrolled at the time.
Roland Vermeesch, then director of HIEPSO, became the first managing director, with Jos Monballyu of KULAK as chairman of the board. In practice the merged school kept working as five separate departments, each with its own head, departmental council and negotiating committee.
The De Haan campus closed in 1999, and social work moved to Ostend. Vermeesch died unexpectedly in 2006, and Lucien Bollaert took over his duties on an interim basis.
Lode De Geyter, until then head of the PIH department, became managing director in 2007; Jan Durnez was appointed chairman of the board. De Geyter reorganised the school's structure over the following years. Applied psychology moved from Ostend to Bruges in 2007 and social work and nursing followed in 2008, after which the Ostend campus was given up. In 2010 the departments were abolished altogether and replaced by two units, one for the Bruges programmes and one for the Kortrijk programmes, supported by shared central services.
Under a Flemish decree, the academic-level programmes inherited from the Provinciale Industriële Hogeschool were transferred to Ghent University in 2013.
Frederik D'hulster, previously director of education and internationalisation, took over as managing director in October 2023. De Geyter moved to the chairmanship of the board. Howest celebrated its thirtieth anniversary in 2025.
From Wikipedia’s article on Hogeschool West-Vlaanderen, shared under CC BY-SA 4.0.5