A lot is happening within research education and equal opportunities

Lena Lidfors, Professor at the Department of Animal Environment and Health is vice dean at the Faculty of veterinary medicin and animal sciences, responsible for doctoral education and equal opportunities.

The number of PhD students at the Faculty on the 17th of October this year was 142 distributed over 8 Departments, but this number constantly changes as we approve new PhD students and others defend their thesis.

FUN has meetings about once per month and handle all received applications according to best practice, but sometimes we must contact the applicants and ask for additional documentation. Do not forget to ask for help from your Departmental study rector for research education before the application is submitted to FUN in order to save both your and our time by being able to handled complete applications. Our study rector for research education, Jan Hultgren, has after a question from FUN developed check lists that will make it easier to check that all relevant appendices are following the applications for new PhD students or thesis defences. We are also investigating if we can develop a system that will make it easier to submit applications to FUN.

Evaluation of the research education subject science of veterinary medicine

UKÄ will evaluate the research education subject science of veterinary medicine during 2017, but we are already attending meetings and preparing the documentation that UKÄ is asking for to be able to carry out their evaluation. During the autumn we sent in suggestions of about 20 persons that can help UKÄ with the evaluation, and now UKÄ has the responsibility to put together the evaluation group.

From the 1st of January 2017 a new individual study plan (ISP) will come into use which means that all applications to FUN regarding approval of new PhD students must be made in the new ISP. We will send information to the study rectors of research education and the heads of departments as soon as it is available on the co-worker web. The advisory board for research education (FUR) and Lotta Hansson are presently going through the general PhD course at SLU.

An active PhD advisory board

The Faculty has an active PhD advisory board with PhD students represented in different councils. The research school GS-VMAS has developed their working and have a web page where the courses are displayed

The Graduate School GS-VMAs have developed their work and have a website where you can find a range of courses, etc.

News from the Equal opportunities committee

Equal opportunities work on the Faculty has, among other things, focused on implementing a Swedish course with the help of "Folkuniversitetet" during the fall. The course is now completed and Ylva Sjunnesson and "Folkuniversitetet "are doing an evaluation of the course.

The annual National Equal Opportunities Conference was held in Lund on 6-7 October and Maja Malmberg from the Equal Opportunities Committee (LVU), and two students from Ull's Student Union participated as the only SLU participants. They have compiled what they heard in some notes reported on the latest LVU meeting.

The Action Plan on equal opportunities will expire at the end of the year and from the 1st of January 2017, the universities should instead of action plans document what they do within the equal opportunities area and carry out annual wage surveys. SLU has not yet decided on how this process should be conducted. Gender mainstreaming is another area that is running and SLU must write a report on how it plans to work with this in the future.

During the autumn Charlotta Lantz has helped us so that it is now easier to find the equal opportunities committee on the webpage, via this link. Help us to point out if something is missing and how we can develop this page further.

Faculty Day approaching

The Faculty Day on the 15th of December with subsequent Christmas party, I hope that many of you will participate in. We have a particular equal opportunities theme in that we have invited Charlotta Signahl to talk about "Diversity- difficult wonderful!?". She keeps the first lecture in Swedish and then in English. You can find more information about the lecturer here.

Lena Lidfors
Vice dean for research education and equal opportunities