(Original Swedish post published 16 May.)
A day’s work as Vice-Chancellor of Uppsala University can contain a lot of variation and today was a case in point. In a moment I’m off to V-dala for dinner with this week’s Q&R17 panelists. The second week is in full progress, with 9 more panels and 66 experts from 13 countries.
This morning, at the usual weekly Vice-Chancellor’s decision-making session, I decided on this year’s winners of the Distinguished Teaching Award. Patience – the press release will go out tomorrow and their identity will be officially announced then. I also approved support from the Vice-Chancellor’s strategic funds for Uppsala Antibiotic Center, which added extra interest to the article in today’s edition of the local newspaper UNT about school pupils who have produced a magazine, Resistens (article in Swedish), about the very topic of antibiotic resistance. The plan for gender mainstreaming was also adopted. It contains the following areas for action:
- Skills development at managerial level
- Content and design of educational programmes
- University-wide governance documents
- Recruitment and skills supply
- Internal distribution of resources
After that, it was off to Ångström and the inauguration of SwedNess, a graduate school in neutron scattering supported by the Swedish Foundation for Strategic Research. Uppsala University is coordinator but it is a cooperative undertaking also involving the Royal Institute of Technology, Chalmers, Linköping University, Lund University and Stockholm University. Twenty doctoral students will be recruited to build up expertise in Sweden for the European Spallation Source (ESS). It’s positive and important that we can cooperate on this graduate school. Thank you, Swedish Foundation for Strategic Research!
The next stop was Gustavianum, where the National Centre for Knowledge on Men’s Violence Against Women launched the report on the Uppsala model, in which research, education and clinical work combine to provide vulnerable women with the support and help they need.
At short notice, we learned that the former president of South Africa, Thabo Mbeki, was visiting Uppsala today, we managed to squeeze in a half-hour talk this afternoon before I went on to the annual meeting of Drivhuset. There’s no chance of boredom in this job, on the countrary, every day is full of interesting meetings and discussions and I’m constantly full of admiration and respect for the work being done and commitment displayed at our University. It’s easy to feel proud as Vice-Chancellor.
