Author: Vice-Chancellor’s Blog (Page 10 of 24)

(Original Swedish post published 1 February 2019.)

Today (1 February) the Inquiry on Governance and Resources delivered its 468-page final report. Here are a few spontaneous reactions based on a quick perusal.

Most of the arguments and proposals are in line with the inquiry’s communications along the way, in its framework proposals and presentations. This means that our earlier view – that the starting points and rhetoric are in keeping with what we would like, though some of the proposals may have negative consequences – remains unchanged.

The entire inquiry is underpinned by a number of key concepts: trust, academic freedom, freedom of action, less micro-management, a long-term perspective and clarification of collegial influence. The inquiry writes about strengthening the freedom of education and the need to clarify the scope for faculty members to influence processes and decisions. These are principles that we whole-heartedly endorse. The close links between education and research are emphasised. This is also a good principle. One expression of this is that the inquiry proposes a single higher education bill.

The inquiry also contains proposals intended to strengthen the long-term perspective and planning possibilities. Four-year planning frameworks might certainly be a good idea. However, we remain sceptical about four-year agreements between higher education institutions and the government based on a dialogue. The idea is that this will make it possible to reward every institution’s strengths and to replace the general targets for higher education with more tailored tasks. Of course stable planning conditions are basically a good thing, but it is hard to imagine that the politicians will refrain from interfering with education for four years. Moreover, these agreements are on top of the annual appropriation directions, they would not replace them. For each higher education institution, the agreements will “formulate goals and follow-up criteria for a number of areas with political priority” (p. 19). What we are concerned about is that this paves the way for political micro-management and an unclear division of responsibilities between the university board and the government. We need to study the effects of this part of the proposal more closely.

Otherwise, the most radical proposals concern the principles determining the allocation of resources by central government. Under the inquiry’s proposal, research and education will not be treated as two separate activities, but rather as a single activity, and the higher education institutions will have free control over a combined funding allocation, although the portions for research and education will be calculated separately.

Particularly on the educational side, the inquiry’s proposals would entail a substantial change. At present, the higher education institutions receive a funding ceiling and then compensation for the number of full-time equivalent students (FTEs) and annual performance equivalents, with different standard price tags for different educational areas. The inquiry proposes that the institutions should instead receive a funding allocation for education and a funding agreement target formulated as the total number of FTEs that the institution is expected to enrol. In other words, half of the funding allocation for education will be fixed, and half calculated by the number of FTEs. The current system of calculating part of the funding on the basis of how many credits the students earn (annual performance equivalents) would be eliminated. One of the arguments given for doing this is the desire to reward life-long learning, in which the degree of performance has traditionally been lower.

The starting value in the transition to the new model would be that each institution’s funding allocation for education would match the current funding ceiling, and the target would be based on the current number of FTEs. This presumably means that the institutions, in practice, would have different implicit average price tags (funding allocation for education/FTE) depending on the combination of price tags it has had in the past. The impact this might have on the ability/incentive of higher education institutions to renew the range of programmes they offer bears thinking about.

The higher education institutions have wanted an inquiry into these matters. Uppsala University submitted input with comments and reactions last March, as described in this blog post. Our most general objection then and now is perhaps that we would have liked the inquiry to take a more fundamental approach to the issue of autonomy. The report that came out today talks about the need for less micro-management, the need for responsibility to lie with the higher education institutions and the fact that capacity planning decisions “have not infrequently been characterised by what we consider to be excessively short-term thinking”. We agree with the description but do not share all the conclusions.

In conclusion, we observe that the inquiry led by Pam Fredman has covered extensive ground. There are many more proposals than those we have mentioned here. We will study this important inquiry closely at our University. We look forward to the consultation process and will hold an open seminar on 18 March in the University Main Building, lecture hall IX. To be continued.

(Original Swedish post published 25 January 2019.)

Today we celebrate scholarship at this year’s Winter Conferment Ceremony at Uppsala University. We began early this morning with the traditional cannon salute from the Castle hill and the ringing of the Cathedral bell. As usual, gunners from Jämtlands fältartilleri are firing the cannon salute.

The day’s events follow a strict programme. The Conferment Ceremony in the Grand Auditorium starts at 12:00. Cannon salutes continue during the ceremony, to honour the faculties, the 90 graduating doctors and our 19 honorary doctors, who come up to the stage to receive the tokens of their new status – laurel wreaths, doctoral hats and diplomas – accompanied by music performed by the Royal Academic Orchestra. At the Winter Conferment Ceremony, the University also awards numerous prizes. This year we have 11 prizewinners, who are being recognised for their contributions and commitment to knowledge.

The titles of the graduating doctors’ theses reflect the breadth and diversity of the University. The topics range from systems for space propulsion to the history of Swedish Jews and the victims of Nazi terror, the complexities of childbirth, male friendship, matter–antimatter interactions, and the genesis of a new Swedish Bible translation. You can read more about the ceremony, the doctoral theses and the prizes in the Conferment Ceremony book. The book also contains autobiographical notes by Professor Arvid G. Högbom, in which he writes about the development of the University and science in the early 20th century.

After the ceremony in the Grand Auditorium, celebrations continue at the faculties’ receptions, followed in the evening by a banquet at Uppsala Castle.

The Vice-Chancellor’s speech at the ceremony.

The cannon salute from the Castle at 7 a.m. Photo: Eva Åkesson

Firing in progress! Photo: Annica Alvén

Jämtlands fältartilleri fire the cannons outside the University Main Building.

The University Main Building and park in winter finery. Photo: David Naylor

Students bearing standards lead the procession into the Grand Auditorium. Photo: Annica Alvén

The procession on the way into the Grand Auditorium for the Conferment Ceremony. Photo: Annica Alvén

Read more about the graduating doctors, honorary doctors and the Conferment Ceremony in this year’s Conferment Ceremony book.

Once a year, the Vice-Chancellor’s Management Council spends a whole day at Campus Gotland. We assembled for departure brutally early on Monday morning, but were rewarded by the stunning sight of the blood moon, a celestial phenomenon that astronomers tell us will next recur 10 years from now.

We devoted the morning session to a regular Management Council meeting, with a break to watch the Statement of Government Policy and the presentation of the new ministers. In his statement, the Prime Minister emphasised the importance of research for Sweden as a knowledge nation, and pledged that both free and challenge-driven research will be strengthened. This is good. Education and schools also received a lot of attention. The plans for yet another reform of teacher education are cause for concern – what is really needed is surely a long-term perspective and a chance to get on without being disturbed. Otherwise, the most prominent issues were sustainable development and the environment, health and social care, integration, security and democracy. We also got a new minister for higher education and research, Matilda Ernkrans. We have already invited her to visit us for a presentation of Uppsala University and look forward to a good working relationship.

After the Management Council meeting we had lunch with Campus Gotland’s students’ union Rindi. One of the priorities for both the students’ union and us is student housing with 12-month contracts. One challenge for the students’ union is to adapt its working methods in response to the many new international students.

The afternoon began with a strategic discussion on the development of Campus Gotland. In July it will be six years since the merger and we can say it has been a success story. So far the focus has mainly been on strengthening undergraduate education. Fifteen new degree programmes have started since 2014. Last year we had more than 1,100 students on campus and more than 1,000 distance students. A fifth of the students are international. The University’s only two international Bachelor’s programmes are in game design and are taught on Gotland. More degree programmes will start in the autumn. This is an impressive development. Now the focus is shifting more to issues of strengthening research and research environments. Much has already started and is in progress – sustainable tourism, energy, digitalisation, conservation, Blått centrum (a centre for water-related issues), children’s health. There are plans to launch an interdisciplinary graduate school on the theme of water and energy. If all decisions are taken, a dozen doctoral students placed on Gotland will be admitted in the coming year.

Rapid development generates new challenges. The premises are beginning to feel crowded, larger teaching rooms and more offices are needed. The presence of so many new international students makes new linguistic demands on staff, teachers and students.  We need to improve the technology for distance education as well as opportunities for staff to participate in continuing professional development and meetings.

The merger phase must soon be regarded as over and we are entering a new, more regular phase. The Advisory Board for Campus Gotland has been working on its input to the revision of Uppsala University: Mission and Core Values, and this has raised the issue of Campus Gotland’s ‘special status’. To what extent will we continue to need separate goals, measures and forms of management for Campus Gotland? This is a discussion we need to pursue over the coming year. However, the fundamentals are clear: activities in Visby will be firmly integrated in Uppsala University’s regular structures and quality systems, while ensuring that we take advantage of the unique opportunities for multi- and interdisciplinarity and the development of the cohesive campus environment, and that the activities are clear and transparent to our partners in the Gotland community in which they are set.

The afternoon continued with a meeting with staff at Campus Gotland at which we discussed ongoing developments nationally and internationally, at the University and in the different disciplinary domains.

The day’s last stop was Region Gotland for a meeting with politicians and officials, which has become an annual tradition. The agenda focused on follow-up of our strategic collaboration agreements with the region. We have a good cooperative relationship, which among other things offers our students the chance to do independent degree projects and other projects in various parts of the region’s administration. We saw a presentation of a student project in which our game design students have worked with student health services in the region to develop a game to promote health and wellbeing among students with functional challenges. A student project, an idea, that has potential for development into a product and perhaps a business. Another example is cooperation between the teacher education programme and our 10 partner schools in the region. This gives our students the chance to work one day a week in school, a ‘trainee position’.

After a long day we returned to Uppsala, a bit tired but above all inspired. Campus Gotland has really become an essential and dynamic part of Uppsala University.

(Original Swedish post published 17 January.)

The holidays are over and now everything’s getting going again. For many students, this is the big exam week. Meanwhile, on Friday we will hold the traditional freshers reception to welcome new students before the semester starts formally on Monday. The world around us is full of uncertainty. Will we have a new government tomorrow, and what sort of research and education policy will it pursue? What will happen about Brexit in the end, and what will the consequences be?

The lake at Sigtuna was looking at its best when the Management Council met there on Tuesday to Wednesday to plan for the year ahead. The vice-rectors told us what’s going on in the disciplinary domains. The students presented their priorities and we looked at developments in the national and international arenas and what we are working on at University-wide level.

We discussed which issues are most important to concentrate on if we want to lay the foundations for the University’s long-term development. Some of the issues near the top of the list are autonomy, integrity and self-determination, as well as how to ensure strong public confidence in the University. The issue of our own capacity for renewal is similarly important. To serve the society we are part of, we must keep in touch with our surroundings and be prepared to constantly re-examine and renew both our education and our research. The greatest challenges in our world have to do with sustainability in a broad sense of the word, but the defence of the open society, democracy and civil rights and freedoms has also become an increasingly relevant objective for universities in the world today.

We had a session on the ongoing revision of our “Mission and Core Values”. Committees, strategic councils, the students’ unions and the doctoral board have submitted numerous ideas and suggestions and the project group has begun to integrate them into a document that will be finalised during the spring. In the process going forward, preliminary versions will be discussed at meetings with deans and heads of department, as well as with groups of staff and students, external partners and international advisers.

We discussed Open Access, more specifically Plan S, as it is known. A number of European research funding bodies, including the EU, are seeking to force a change in the business models used by academic journals, from a subscription-based system to a system in which authors pay a publication fee, after which their articles are made freely available to all. One consequence of Plan S is that, starting in 2020, researchers who receive support from affiliated funding bodies will have to publish in journals that offer – or intend to offer – Open Access in accordance with this model, which far from all leading journals currently do. In Sweden, Forte, Formas and Riksbankens Jubileumsfond have joined the coalition behind the initiative (which is called cOAlition S), while the Swedish Research Council has chosen to remain unaffiliated for now. We share the Swedish Research Council’s wait-and-see approach to this issue. Though the objective is laudable, the timetable is too radical and the consequences have not been adequately studied. There is an obvious risk that researchers will be caught in the middle in the short run.

We used part of the away day for our own skills development, under the heading of time and time use. How do we use our working hours? How can we find enough time, and how can we work more efficiently? Most of us have access to powerful digital tools in our computers that we only use a fraction of because we never take the time to learn properly how to use them. We learned how to avoid being ruled by our email inbox by adopting a structured way of working with calendars, email and to-do lists. We also touched on how to save one another’s time by good email culture: one item of business per email, a clearly specified topic in the subject line, short messages, no irony, cc only those who really need the information, and avoid “Reply all” as far as possible. And complicated issues, discussions and particularly conflicts should never be dealt with by email at all. Make a phone call instead or arrange a short meeting. For many of us participants, it was an instructive and practically transformative session.

Your now time-conscious and efficient management wishes you a happy new 2019!

An eventful 2018 is coming to an end. Fires, climate crisis, Brexit and elections to the Riksdag have dominated the news. Uppsala University has engaged in discussions in various ways and has contributed perspectives and facts.

Our task in the University management is to create conditions that enable the University we are all part of to become even better. The University Board is in the process of revising the University’s rules of procedure. This document sets out the basic principles of the University’s management and governance, in which it goes without saying that the responsibility shared by the faculty and strong student influence are essential elements. We hope that the new version of the University’s Mission and Core Values that is now being prepared will enable us even more clearly to identify strategic challenges and areas in which the University needs to push forward. The Development Plan 2050 project focuses on our vision of the University’s future spatial structure and physical shape.

In a Swedish context, we are proud that our University was the most successful in this year’s Swedish Research Council calls. We have done particularly well in natural sciences, engineering and technology, and in the humanities and social sciences. We are also competing well in the international arena. In medicine and pharmacy, for example, we can take particular pleasure in our successes in ENABLE – a European project coordinated from Uppsala that focuses on developing future antibiotics. We have also received several new grants from the European Research Council (ERC).

The internationalisation of our educational programmes continues apace, and our international Master’s programmes attract steadily increasing numbers of students. The number of students admitted for the 2018 autumn semester was nearly 20 per cent up on the previous year, and the number of paying non-European students is increasing at a similar rate.

At Campus Gotland your duties may include riding – if you’re the Vice-Chancellor. The picture is from this year’s welcoming event for new students. Photo: Mikael Wallerstedt

Campus Gotland continues to develop. This year we celebrated the fifth anniversary of our merger and we have more students than ever. We are particularly pleased that so many international students have found their way to the island. Research activities are increasing and many actors in the region are keen to work with us.

We have conferred new doctor’s degrees, 105 in January and 166 in June. During Inauguration Week in November, the 45 new professors gave well-attended lectures and the week concluded in the traditional way with the inauguration ceremony in the Grand Auditorium and dinner at Uppsala Castle.

Our various networks underline the role of the University in the world. In 2018, as part of the U4 network enlarged by the University of Tartu, we prepared an application for the pilot round of the European Universities Initiative. We see this as an important strategic venture to establish our position in Europe. The year has also featured constructive meetings in the SASUF and MIRAI networks. We have been represented at conferences, meetings and fairs in every corner of the world, and the world has come to us as well. One notable visitor was UN Secretary-General António Guterres, who gave a well-attended Dag Hammarskjöld Lecture in April.

UN Secretary-General António Guterres signs the University’s guest book. Photo: Mikael Wallerstedt

In connection with the celebration of 150 years of diplomatic relations between Sweden and Japan, the Uppsala exhibition “The Art of Natural Science” was shown at Tokyo University Museum. It was opened in the presence of the King and Queen of Sweden and the Emperor and Empress of Japan. The focus was on three well-known Uppsala figures – Olof Rudbeck, Carl Linnaeus and Carl Peter Thunberg.

At the end of April, a ship reached New York bearing the exhibition “The Vikings Begin”. This was the start of an exhibition tour in the United States presenting a selection of pre-Viking Age artefacts. These objects are usually kept at Gustavianum (Uppsala University Museum) but now the world of the early Vikings will be revealed to a wider audience in the United States.

During the year a series of critical dialogues on topical issues was launched at the Humanities Theatre. Here, researchers in the humanities and social sciences have treated a keen audience to many important insights into matters of public debate.

Hayar Gohary, Project Director at Akademiska Hus, Vice-Rector Johan Tysk, Vice-Chancellor Eva Åkesson and Charlotte Thelm, Deputy Head of Division at NCC Building Sweden. Photo: Mikael Wallerstedt

In October, the ground was broken for the extension of the Ångström Laboratory. This building project covers 30,000 square metres and aims to enhance the creative interdisciplinary environment for research and education in natural sciences, engineering and information technology. This is the biggest project that Uppsala University and Akademiska Hus have ever undertaken together. The new wing of Ångström will be opened in 2020 and the new main building in 2022.

During the year, we have worked systematically to boost the support we provide to education and research. We have developed our support to research issues at University-wide level and raised the level of ambition in our fundraising activities. IT coordination is another prioritised project that has taken great strides forward in 2018.

At the time of writing, the climate meeting in Katowice has just ended. The University’s primary contribution to sustainable development lies in our education and research. Looking ahead, we see a need to further increase our focus on sustainability issues – we will all have to make this our New Year’s resolution.

Many thanks to all of you – staff, students, friends and partners – who together make Uppsala University so successful. Well done! We wish you all an enjoyable break over the holidays.

Eva Åkesson

Anders Malmberg

Katarina Bjelke

(Original Swedish post published 14 December.)

This week we have celebrated science. During Nobel Week, the eyes of the world are on Sweden. And of course, the prize ceremony and banquet are fantastic. But above all, it gives us a chance to focus on the contributions of science and research to our world.

In general, universities aim to make the world a better place through education, research and new knowledge. At Uppsala University, we express this ambition explicitly in our vision statement: “for the benefit of humankind and for a better world”. Through their discoveries, this year’s Nobel Laureates have made substantial contributions to a better world – new treatments for cancer and other sicknesses, new medicines, new ways of calculating the consequences of climate change. But their discoveries also lay a foundation for new research around the world and future discoveries. Perhaps even new Nobel Prizes. I also hope that all the attention and visibility for research inspires our young people and students to go into research.

Professor Donna Strickland, Professor Sir Gregory P. Winter, Vice-Chancellor Eva Åkesson, Professor George P. Smith and Professor Frances H. Arnold.

One of the highlights of Nobel Week is the Laureates’ visit to Uppsala to lecture to our students, researchers and others who are interested. They have done this, with almost no exceptions, as long as the Nobel Prizes have been awarded. This year, four of the Laureates drew a full house in the Grand Auditorium: the three Chemistry Prize winners George P. Smith, Sir Gregory P. Winter and Frances H. Arnold, and Physics Prize winner Donna Strickland. I was particularly pleased that the two women Nobel Prize winners this year were here. Before the lectures began, one of our students, Sofia Lindblad, received Uppsala Chemistry Society’s prize to an outstanding student. She received the diploma from the hands of the Nobel Prize winners. It warmed my chemist’s heart to see it.

One innovation this year was that all the Laureates gave their lectures in the Grand Auditorium, instead of being spread out around the University. In the past, we had to choose one lecture to listen to, now we were able to listen to them all. We were treated to four really splendid lectures. The Nobel Laureates left the Grand Auditorium to a standing ovation.

After the lectures, the programme continued with the traditional Nobel Lunch at Uppsala Castle, for the Laureates, researchers, students, and partners and friends of the University. Deputy Vice-Chancellor Anders Malmgren hosted the lunch, while I carried on to Gotland for Campus Gotland’s glistening Christmas party.

On Friday afternoon, the University Board held its last meeting of the semester. The meeting discussed internal governance and control. Internal Audit is entrusted by the University Board with auditing the University and reports directly to the Board. This time, one of the topics was registration. The audits performed help us to clarify and improve our routines and information.

At its December meeting, the University Board usually always decides on adjustments to the budget after the Budget Bill. But not this time. We want our departments and faculties to have long-term and robust conditions for planning. Consequently, no changes are being made ahead of 2019. The budget decided on in June applies. Any adjustments that are needed will be made ahead of our work on the budget for 2020. We also had a preliminary discussion on the budget documentation to be submitted to the government (however that turns out) at the end of February.

The University Board has expressed a desire for presentations on research at the University. The day’s meeting therefore concluded with a mini-lecture on sleep by Professor Christian Benedict from the Department of Neuroscience. He lectured on “Why we sleep”, from the perspective of the brain. Sleep is good for our memory and our creativity, and helps us manage our emotions. Sleep is good for our overall health and wellbeing. The lecture was very much appreciated and I think we all learned something.

Outside the University Main Building, a thin layer of powdery snow covers the ground. It’s beginning to feel like Christmas.

Once a year, the Management Council goes on a trip. At the beginning of this week, we visited London. The UK is one of the countries Uppsala University cooperates most extensively with – and we want it to stay that way even after Brexit.

Our programme started on Monday morning with a tour of King’s College. This is a university in the heart of central London with which we cooperate widely on research and education. We received an introduction to King’s and to the work they have done in recent years on their vision. This has led to a new strategy and a vision statement that coincides almost exactly with our own. The process of change has been led by the President and Principal of King’s College, Professor Edward Byrne, who has agreed to join Uppsala University’s Advisory Board. Naturally, we are delighted about this. I took the opportunity to give him the Quality and Renewal 2017 report, so he will be well prepared.

King’s works intensively with the local authorities and politicians. It was particularly interesting to hear about the education and research projects they have conducted in partnership with the city in the London Stories project. Our students visited the King’s College London Students’ Union, of which all students at King’s are automatically members. The agenda included student involvement and mental health. Deputy Vice Rector Mats Larhed and Vice Rector Johan Tysk also met their counterparts at King’s.

The afternoon was devoted to a focus discussion on Brexit at the Swedish Embassy, together with our three British partners in the Guild network of universities. Apart from King’s College, Glasgow University and the University of Warwick were also represented. During the 25 years that Sweden has been a member of the EU, we have enjoyed close partnerships with British universities, where many Swedes study and work. The session was introduced by Dr Julie Smith, member of the House of Lords and Director of the European Centre in the Department of Politics and International Studies, Cambridge University. She told us about the uncertain situation and the difficulties ahead of the vote in Parliament next week. About the consequences of Deal or No Deal. Many questions remain. How will we work after Brexit? What will happen to tuition fees? What will happen to research cooperation? What will be the consequences for Swedish researchers at British universities? As yet, there are few answers.

Brexit was in the air wherever we went in London. We got the sense that our hosts were rather tired of the question. But there were also creative solutions in reserve for keeping cooperation with Sweden and the EU alive.  Or, as they put it: “Why waste a good crisis?”

In the evening, Uppsala University organised an event at the Swedish Residence. Many alumni, honorary doctors and other friends had responded to our invitation. The Ambassador of Sweden to the United Kingdom, Torbjörn Sohlström, welcomed the guests. After my introductory words and brief presentation of Uppsala University, Professor David Sumpter from the Department of Mathematics gave a much-appreciated popular lecture on “The Dangers of Algorithms”. We are very grateful to Ambassador Torbjörn Sohlström for allowing us to be at the Residence.

On Tuesday we visited the Science Gallery at King’s College. The Science Gallery is a new arena for confronting issues that present a challenge to society, with artists drawing on research to explore the problems. The theme of the debut exhibition is addiction. It took up various types of addiction and related problems, ranging from mobile phones, sugar and gambling to the consequences for families when a family member has problems with addictive behaviours or addiction. The purpose of the visit was to see how the concept worked, with a view to perhaps starting something similar in Uppsala.

The last item on our two-day agenda in London was a visit to University College London (UCL). They gave us a presentation on UCL’s Grand Challenge Programme. This is a programme at the University involving cooperation across faculties and subject areas. One example was a project on HIV involving literary studies, technology, behavioural science, economics, medicine and pharmacy. It was extremely interesting. At UCL too, we could identify shared interests.

We returned to Uppsala satisfied after a few busy and inspiring days. I am sure our cooperation will survive and indeed develop, but obviously the conditions will be affected by the vote on Tuesday. We are following the situation with great interest. Deal or No Deal?

Adviser to the Vice-Chancellor Stefan Eriksson recommends:

For some time now, Uppsala University has been making increased efforts to promote good practice in research. As part of this drive, Professor John Ioannidis from Stanford University was invited this autumn to give a lecture on the subject Prolific science, prolific authors, prolific data and statistics: How about good research practices? The event attracted a large audience and in the end ran out of seats. We are therefore pleased that all those who were unable to attend now have a chance to watch a recording of the lecture. It contained an overview of the studies Ioannidis and his colleagues have done, which identify various typical practices that risk undermining trust in research and its results. Ioannidis challenged our University to take these issues seriously and asked what incentives we give researchers to engage in high-quality research.

The lecture is open to employees at Uppsala University and is available on the new Medarbetarportalen (intranet) page with information on good research practice and research ethics. Here you will find ways to contact people who can help with questions about research ethics in one way or another. The page also contains information on guidelines and laws for researchers to follow in their research, the permissions they may need and how to apply for them, and an extensive collection of tools to use. For example, you will find online courses, templates, guides, checklists and useful links. At the moment, the page is only available in Swedish but an English version will be published soon. We hope that the page will be a useful resource in enabling us to fulfil the instructions of the Higher Education Act to uphold “academic credibility and good research practice”.

On Thursday to Friday last week, 22–23 November, the U4 network held its annual rectors’ conference in Göttingen. The network is ten years old this year and has an impressive number of strong, well-functioning cooperation projects under its belt. Joint publications, funding applications, peer review, joint doctoral degrees and Master’s programmes, to name a few.

In 2018, U4 has taken another big step towards the future by preparing an application, together with the University of Tartu, to become a European University. European Universities are expected to work together across national and disciplinary borders to create an education system that offers better opportunities for all, for example by eliminating obstacles to exchanges and making Europe more open. In this way, we will together address skills shortages and societal challenges in Europe.

Cluster chair Johan Tysk

Delegations from the four U4 universities (Uppsala, Gent, Göttingen and Groningen), and from Tartu, participated in this year’s conference. The Uppsala delegation included representatives from the disciplinary domains, the administration and the student body, the University Director and the Vice-Chancellor, as well as other people involved in preparing the application. There were many constructive discussions on how the U4 network can move forward in the coming years. Preparing the application has given U4 renewed energy and vigour.

Ulrike Beisigel, President of the University of Göttingen

University Board meeting

Every autumn semester, the University Board gathers for an overnight conference. The idea is to give ourselves a chance to discuss some issues in greater depth than we have time for at the ordinary meetings. We kicked off our discussions on Wednesday afternoon with a look at international ranking lists and our thinking about them to date. To begin with, we noted that while many at the University are critical towards the lists, they are relevant. In particular, we see the influence the lists have in the international arena – in recruiting international students, certain grant programmes and their impact when recruiting researchers. We focus on three lists:  Shanghai, the Times Higher Education Supplement and QS. The University Board was unanimous about not letting the lists determine our priorities, but also about the importance of continued systematic reporting of data and analysis. Read more about rankings here.

The next point of discussion was our Mission and Core Values. The University Board has tasked me, as Vice-Chancellor, with revising this document and I have appointed Deputy Vice-Chancellor Anders Malmberg as project manager. He reported on all the meetings he has had with the senior officials in the disciplinary domains, advisory boards and students at the University. The University Board wants the Mission and Core Values to be a more precise, sharper and more dynamic document. The most important message was that it must be usable and applicable at all levels of the University.

The autumn conference has its own traditions. One standard feature is a presentation of the year’s Nobel prizes by University researchers. This year Associate Senior Lecturer Johan Chau Söderström talked about the physics prize, Professor Mikael Widersten talked about the chemistry prize, Professor Peter Fredriksson talked about the economics prize and Professor Gunilla Enblad talked about the medicine prize. It was fascinating – a much appreciated part of the programme.

On the second day, we had the ordinary meeting. In my report, I told the Board about the Internationalisation Inquiry, which delivered its final report at the end of October. There was great interest and we will return to this topic at a later meeting.

We also had a report from the working group on revision of the rules of procedure. This project is divided into several parts. The first part, which addresses terms of office, the appointment of the vice-chancellor, selection of heads of department, etc., has been referred to various bodies in the University for comments. A decision will be made at either the December or the January meeting. The group is continuing its work and further parts of the project will be circulated for comments during the spring.

Deputy University Director Kay Svensson and Oscar Petersson from the Planning Division then gave the University Board an overview of the international networks in which the University participates and a status report on the European Universities application.

We also chose two Oscar Prize winners and one recipient of the Torgny Segerstedt Medal. You will be able to read more about this on the University’s website.

To end the second day, University Director Katarina Bjelke described ongoing work in the University Administration to provide coordinated support for education and research.

Budget bill

The new budget bill was presented on Thursday afternoon. In the absence of a new government, much remains unclear. As far as Uppsala University is concerned, one consequence is that we will receive SEK 20 million less for research and SEK 20 million less for education than expected. This is mainly because the resources for the research bill and targeted initiatives in education have not yet been included.

But we are not worried. This will not affect our activities in 2019. We also know that there is broad consensus among the parties on an increase in direct government funding and targeted initiatives in education. We expect the details in these areas to become clear later when a new government is in place.

Visit from Åbo Akademi University

On Friday morning, we had a visit from Åbo Akademi University. We have a long tradition of cooperation, which we are keen to develop further. Today’s programme included talks with representatives of the teacher education programme, peace and conflict research and the Baltic University Programme. We look forward to continued cooperation.

Inauguration of professors

The party from Åbo Akademi University is here at just the right time for the highlight of the week and perhaps of the semester. This Friday it’s time for our inauguration of professors. In this year’s ceremony, we will inaugurate 45 new professors, as well as presenting the Distinguished Teaching Awards and the Uppsala University Innovation Prize ‘Hjärnäpplet’.

The inauguration of professors is always an enjoyable and impressive occasion. Evening wear, long dresses, the Royal Academic Orchestra, banners and the traditional procession create a special Uppsala atmosphere. For me personally, the ceremony also means a chance to give my traditional speech congratulating the prizewinners, giving the University’s perspective on what the inauguration means and what we expect of our new professors, but above all, welcoming them in their new role at our splendid University.