Category: Uncategorized (Page 19 of 34)

(Original Swedish post.)

Yesterday I signed an agreement on cooperation – Lärosäten Öst (Higher Education Institutions East). The participants are Uppsala University, the Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences, Örebro University, Dalarna University, the University of Gävle and Mälardalen University.

Signing of the agreement on Lärosäten Öst

When a regional reorganisation of Sweden was under discussion a year or two ago, we vice-chancellors in the proposed new region began to talk about enhanced cooperation. They were good discussions and a number of constructive ideas for enhanced cooperation came up. The regional reorganisation is now on ice, but the cooperation will continue.

In many respects, it’s a matter of continuing to build on what we already have. For instance, in research we have clinical research centres in several towns in the region. We cooperate on placements in many of our degree programmes, not least teacher education and specialist nursing programmes. Uppsala University Innovation has engaged in cooperation with both the University of Gävle and Dalarna University for several years. By cooperating, we higher education institutions take greater joint responsibility for ensuring that certain programmes that are in demand on the labour market are always offered in our region.

Uppsala University already cooperates with the Stockholm universities in several areas, but that is no obstacle to taking greater responsibility in our region. The one does not exclude the other – quite the contrary. Nor do I believe there is a contradiction between local and global. A more explicit regional rootedness can strengthen our international position.

We also intend to increase collaboration on the administrative side around certain expert and support functions. A network doesn’t carry on of its own accord, nor does it exist just for the sake of it. I believe in cooperation – together we can do more than we do separately. Now ideas and ambitions will take real shape and offer new opportunities for students, staff, businesses and organisations in our region.

Peter Högberg, Vice-Chancellor of the Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences, signs the agreement

(Original Swedish post published 10 June.)

The weeks speed by and with the graduation ceremonies past, the semester is nearing its end. But there’s still plenty going on at the University and summer holidays will have to wait until after Almedalen Week in July. We have a busy programme at Campus Gotland that week. Do take a look at the programme (in Swedish) – even if you’re not there, you will be able to follow many of our seminars online.

Last week I participated in the Hamburg Transnational University Leaders Council. About fifty of us heads of universities from around the world were there to spend a few days discussing Differentiation in the post-secondary sector: A response to massification, competition, and the emergence of the global knowledge economy. The discussion started out from a number of country analyses, which were presented in a report, and presentations from six different countries. It’s valuable to take stock of the international environment and gain insight into the education systems in Russia, India, Chile, Australia, Ghana, France from colleagues in this way. While some challenges are shared, the systems are also completely different in many respects. On the second day we divided into workshops – I chaired “Differentiated access to meet mixed goals in post-secondary systems”, with participants from Italy, Colombia, Nigeria, Russia, Japan and Korea. The session “Safeguarding Academic Freedom in a Changing World” revealed many differences in our views of academic freedom – even if we all value it highly and are prepared to defend it. The topic “Universities and the Global Crisis of Democracy” generated at least as lively a debate.

Rector Ignatieff from the Central European University, Hungary, speaking on academic freedom

On Friday I travelled from Hamburg to Oslo to participate in the annual conference of the Nordic Institute for Studies in Innovation, Research and Education, which debated the question of whether measurement is the way to higher quality. I contributed by talking about our experience from our ongoing research evaluation Q&R17 and our view of proposals to allocate basic government appropriations for higher education on the basis of external collaboration. My impression is that there is a more healthily critical and reflective discussion on eva luation in Norway, among all parties concerned, than we have in Sweden. In Oslo I also took the opportunity to meet our new chair Gudmund Hernes for discussions ahead of the University Board meeting on 20 June, when we will welcome several new members.

(Original Swedish post published 2 June.)

The Guild of European Research-Intensive Universities, or the Guild, as we often call it, is a European university network that was established a year ago to give the university sector a stronger voice in Europe. At the end of the week, some of us from Uppsala University participated in the Guild Forum: Universities, Research and the Future of Europe in Brussels. There were panel debates with interesting discussions on challenges and opportunities for the next framework programme (FP9) – what approach should be taken to excellence and wider participation respectively, what are the major future challenges for Europe, can the programmes be simplified, and can we be more open to the world? I (Eva) took part in a panel debate on Research, Innovation and the Citizen: The Added Value of the EU.

In the Guild Workshops section, I chose the topic: Challenges for Europe’s sustainable development: translating the UN’s sustainable development goals into priorities for European research. Creative and inspiring discussions that encouraged all participants to think about these issues in new ways. The announcement by the US President later that evening that the United States was leaving the climate agreement gave an extra edge to our discussions.

Dinner speaker Jean-Pierre Bourguignon, President of the European Research Council

The next day it was time for the General Assembly, the meeting of university heads. First we had a visit from Kurt Vandenberghe, who works at the European Commission as Director for Policy Development and Coordination at DG Research and Innovation. We had an open and productive discussion that helped the network move forward in our work in Brussels. During the meeting, the University of Bern was elected as a member, so now there are nineteen universities in the Guild. We approved a position paper on FP9. Many bodies get actively involved and submit these types of documents – the Association of Swedish Higher Education has also formulated positions ahead of the next framework programme.

New Board of Directors: Eva Åkesson, Vincent Blondel, Volli Kalm (Anton Muscatelli absent)

A new Board of Directors was elected for the next three-year period and I was entrusted with the position of Vice-Chair. The new Chair is Vincent Blondel, Rector of the University of Louvain, who succeeds Ole Petter Ottersen (University of Oslo). Ole Petter resigned from the post as he is taking over as Vice-Chancellor of Karolinska Institutet on 1 August. Now it feels as if the Guild is really taking off, we have real commitment among the members and a well-organised office in place in Brussels. It is up to us in Uppsala University how we want to use all the opportunities that this network gives us in the European arena in future.

Thank you presentation to Ole Petter Ottersen

For two intensive and (at first) terribly chilly weeks in May, the University played host to more than 130 colleagues from about 20 different countries when the Q&R panels came to make their site visits. Each of the 19 panels spent five days in Uppsala to experience our research environments and talk with their representatives.

Quality and Renewal 2017 (Q&R17) focuses on evaluating conditions and processes for excellent research rather than research results as such, and it was exciting to see how this concept would work out in real life. After feedback from the panel chairs at the end of each week of visits, we feel we can say that on the whole, it’s worked out very well. The panels seem to have understood their role and their task in this evaluation. They were impressed by the quality of the self-evaluations they had seen and the openness they experienced when they visited the departments.

And judging by the oral feedback we received from the chairs, there’s no doubt our ‘critical friends’ have made a number of observations that will lead to improvement measures. Career systems, the capacity for strategic renewal and the link between research and education (and, where relevant, clinical activities) are areas in which the potential for improvement is repeatedly underlined.

Now the panels’ reports will begin to arrive – they’re due by 15 June – and after that perhaps the most important phase for us at Uppsala University will begin. Where the Q&R project is concerned, it’s time to put together a final report in which the panel reports are supplemented by broad analyses of the questionnaire that was carried out last autumn, summary descriptions of the bibliometric analyses and, not least, the project management’s overall observations and conclusions on the whole process.

For everyone else – heads of department, deans, vice-rectors and the Vice-Chancellor, together with the relevant boards, committees and other collegial bodies – it will then be time to turn the panels’ conclusions and recommendations into practical measures. Only then will Q&R17 really have an impact on research quality and renewal at Uppsala University.

(Original Swedish post.)

Uppsala is delightful at this time of year and today at last it was time for the Spring Conferment Ceremony.

The conferment ceremony does not go unnoticed in this city. The celebrations began as early as 07:00, with a cannon salute from Uppsala Castle carried out by Jämtlands fältartilleri, as tradition dictates. At 08:00, the great cathedral bell rang out in honour of the University and all the new doctors.

After the temporary move to the cathedral, we were at last back in the University Main Building for the grand ceremony. Even though the renovation is not quite finished, the scaffolding is still there and it smells a little newly painted, it felt wonderful to be ‘home’ for the conferment ceremony. The floor was polished, the pots full of flowers, everything was nearly back to normal. Many people had lent a hand with cleaning and fixing things up so that we could hold the ceremony in the Main Building. It’s almost exactly 130 years since the building was inaugurated. The official reopening is not until the autumn, when the University reaches the age of 540, on 6–7 October.

The ceremony in the Grand Auditorium began with a procession led proudly by the massed flags of all the Uppsala nations and students’ unions, accompanied by the Royal Academic Orchestra. Today we were able to confer doctor’s degrees on 130 new doctors from eight of the University’s nine faculties. Impressive!

The Vice-Chancellor’s welcome speech pays tribute to our doctors and jubilee doctors and describes current developments at the University. You can read the speech here. The Faculty of Medicine’s degree conferrer, Professor Ulf Landegren, then gave a lecture on the topic of molecular tools for health assessments.

Those who received their doctorate fifty years ago are known as jubilee doctors. This year 39 of them chose to take part in the conferment ceremony. The President of the Uppsala Student Union, Daniel Simmons, gave a speech paying tribute to them. The jubilee doctors’ speech was delivered by Leif Lewin, Professor Emeritus of Government. As usual, the music during the ceremony was brilliantly performed by our own Royal Academic Orchestra conducted by Director Musices, Professor Stefan Karpe.

Our ceremonies are an image of our University, bringing together education and research, young and old, our future and our history. You can read more about the ceremony, our new doctors and jubilee doctors in the conferment ceremony book (in Swedish). There you will also find an essay by Professor Tore Frängsmyr on Uppsala University’s first professor of the history of science and ideas, the humanist Johan Nordström.

After a few hours in the Grand Auditorium, it was pleasant to mingle in more relaxed style at the receptions at the Faculty of Law and the Faculty of Theology. Now it will soon be time for the banquet at the Castle, with more than 700 guests dressed to the nines. There’ll be more speeches, good food, more music and dancing, far into the bright spring night.

(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:

1. Skills development at managerial level
2. Content and design of educational programmes
3. University-wide governance documents
4. Recruitment and skills supply
5. 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.

(Original Swedish post.)

On Wednesday, the entire University management (apart from Torsten, who had other commitments) visited Skåne for a joint meeting with the management of Lund University. We shared experiences of managing agency capital, compensation for language programmes, storing of research data and financing of facilities. We compared our impressions of the terms of reference for Agneta Bladh’s inquiry on internationalisation and Pam Fredman’s inquiry on governance and resource allocation, and we discussed the funding of national infrastructure resources, in particular Max IV and the Swedish National Infrastructure for Computing (ANIC).

These regular meetings are valuable. It is important that Sweden’s two largest and broadest research universities maintain a dialogue and develop a common view on fundamental research and education policy issues. Our thanks to Torbjörn von Schantz, Eva Wiberg and others at Lund for their hospitality and for a productive time together!

Before travelling back to Uppsala, we found itme for a short visit to the Museum of Artistic Process and Public Art, very interesting and inspiring.

(Original Swedish post published 8 May.)

This week and next, 19 panels of external experts will visit our University. Today we were pleased to welcome the first group – 10 panels made up of 68 experts from 17 different countries. The experts’ role is to analyse the strengths and weaknesses of our research environments and to recommend ways to improve our activities. Q&R17 – which stands for Quality and Renewal 2017 – is the third evaluation Uppsala University has carried out, on our own initiative, following rounds in 2007 and 2011. The purpose this time is not to grade and rank but to give good advice as critical friends through constructive collegial dialogue so that we can develop and become even better. Q&R17 also includes reflection on the links between research and education, and between research and external collaboration.

An exercise of this kind requires a lot of work on the part of many people and we in the University management are impressed that everyone involved has devoted so much time and thought to it. Today it was especially pleasing to meet our external panelists, who asked many questions and showed great interest. This bodes well for a rewarding week for everyone involved. We look forward to summing up the first week on Friday and then gathering ourselves to welcome the next group in a week’s time. Read more here.

(Original Swedish post published 7 March.)

There are many reasons to celebrate and salute success. One such occasion came on Friday when the Göran Gustafsson Prizes were awarded to young researchers – Anna Rostedt Punga and Cecilia Persson of Uppsala University received the Göran Gustafsson Prize of SEK 2.5 million each to be used freely for research purposes. The small prize of SEK 0.5 million went to Olov Norlén and Reza Younesi. The prizes were presented at a grand ceremony in Stensalen at the Royal Palace of Stockholm. A total of SEK 12 million was shared out to promising young researchers at Uppsala University and the Royal Institute of Technology.

Anna Rostedt Punga gives a speech of thanks on behalf of the prizewinners

Another occasion came on Thursday at the Department of Business Studies, which celebrated the successful launch of new international Master’s programmes that have attracted many applicants. At the same time, the newly recognised Excellent Teachers, newly promoted professors and new docents were honoured. There were celebratory cakes and book prizes. It’s important to take time to celebrate, to take pleasure in one another’s successes. It makes a difference to say a few words of appreciation to each other – we ought to do it much more often.

(Original Swedish post published 3 May.)

I haven’t had time to read the evaluations, but many participants expressed their appreciation of the overnight conference of heads of department that we have just had. The positive comments were not solely attributable to the perfect early summer weather we enjoyed at the venue, Fagerudd.

On the first day, the department heads dived into the rules of procedure, in a session led by Lena Marcusson. Although the main focus was on the departments and the role of a head of department, many other questions also came up and I feel that the working group received a lot of sensible and intelligent input for their ongoing work. At the end of the day, Staffan Svärd looked back on his six years as a head of department in a rich and interesting presentation. We learned about ‘gegenpressing’ and embraced the advice: “Be calm and be yourself.”

The second day was about staff recruitment and development. Daniel Gillberg and Eliane Forsse started out by setting out the framework for staff recruitment and development plans and describing the recruitment, development and termination support available at Uppsala University. Åsa Kettis then talked about career support for young researchers. Magnus Öberg, Karin Forsberg Nilsson and Olof Karis gave us three examples of practice at department level. It’s striking how different – yet also how similar – things can be. I heard many positive comments over the two days on how important and rewarding it is to meet one another and exchange experiences, some heads of department are new and need to get to know their colleagues.

Back in Uppsala, I (Eva) and Vice-Rector Torsten Svensson met a group representing 12 Canadian universities on a study trip to Sweden and Finland. Anders Malmberg took care of a meeting with NCC, who are one of our strategic partners. The day’s work ended with this semester’s update meeting with the management of the Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences (SLU). We discussed our cooperation – and noted that SLU will be 40 and UU 540 this year!