Summer greetings from the deans of the VH faculty

Greetings from Dean Kristina Dahlborn
Kristina Dahlborn, Professor at the Department of Anatomy, Physiology and Biochemistry, and Dean at the Faculty of Veterinary Medicin and Animal Science

My last summer as dean is feeling both sad and liberating, because sometimes I feel I'm not really able to convey your opinions, how talented you as coworkers are and what fantastic work we do at VH. In any case, we have not received more resources in the form of government funding to our field.

I will spend the summer reading your self-assessments in KoN and the review panel's reports. So I'm looking forward to a good summer with exciting reading that I will then report at the vice-chancellor's strategic meeting at the end of August.

Our appeal to ECOVE did not go through but we will have a return visit on 11-12 October, and until then we will ensure that all serious shortcomings are resolved. We also work in parallel with developing a new and better agreement with UDS.

In the autumn, Anna Jansson and Sigrid Agenäs' report on Day 1 competence for animal agronomists will be completed.

We have booked a date for a faculty day and Christmas party - December 19th - so save the date in your calendar.

So we have an exciting fall in front of us so make sure to take a holiday break before that!

Greetings from you dean

Greetings from Deputy Dean Henrik Rönnberg
Henrik Rönnberg, Professor at the Department of Clinical Sciences and Deputy Dean at the Faculty of Veterinary Medicine and Animal Science

Summertime Blues?

Hey all!

Finally! As sure as it will not be a Nobel Prize in Literature this year, it will be a wonderful summer! It's soccer world cup, school has finished and I was on my twelfth graduation at the school of the kids! It was of course absolutely wonderful and everyone is so sweet and expectant! As an adult, we are not allowed to become blasé. We've been in before. We know that the time goes faster the older you become. We have already learned (we believe in any case) what the kids will learn next year.

When I arrived at the university, I was naive, expectant and felt it was going to be great to learn everything I could get hold of! We must not forget that today's students are equally set, with all expectation and naivety. They are to be dressed in knowledge and experience. We are the teachers who stand for this and even if we tell for the tenth time the same thing, it is completely new to the students! That we are still hungry to learn our knowledge is contagious for the students who then think it's more fun to be here! We have the best students in the world at SLU and we are the world's best SLU! Research is the basis of the teaching we conduct at a university, so we must be as eager to take on that task too!

To make me able to keep that eagerness, I need a summer with a little "Ernstfeeling" at the BBQ, ice cold rosé with family and friends, not driving the kids to school in the morning for a while, enjoy all the new music that has come out, watch the soccer world cup, a bit of clinic time at UDS and I'll be back with a few weeks of dean duty when all my nice coworkers log out.

Do your own thing of the summer and make sure it does not become a Summertime Blues, but a Summertime Rock!

Greetings from Vice Dean Anne-Marie Dalin
Anne-Marie Dalin, Professor at the Department of Clinical Sciences and Vice Dean responsible for education at the Faculty of Veterinary Medicine and Animal Science

Now another study year has passed and much has been done or/and is underway in education. In order to increase student recruitment, especially the animal science programs, but also for a broadening of all VH programs, we had different activities during the spring; a student-driven project, #Pluggadjur (study animal) campaign, students visited their old high schools to inform about SLU, the web pages and keywords were updated. However, it is not easy to reach the target group and there is great competition between the universities. The result for VH was a slight increase for the Agronomy/Animal Science program. The veterinary and veterinary nurse programs still have high search pressure. We hope to continue with the #Pluggadjur campaign next study year and that we can get started already in the fall.

There is a great need for licensed veterinary nurses in Sweden, especially at the small animal clinics. The stakeholders urge SLU to increase the number of places on the program. SLU has increased the number of seats by 100% (from 40 to 80 / year) from 2014 to 2017, but now the question is whether VH can increase the admission to 100 students / year. Therefore, a consequence analysis has been carried out and it shows that a lot of reconstruction within VHC and additional resources are needed for it to be implemented. In addition, the Ministry of Enterprise and Innovation is pushing VH-faculty to run more "fast tracks" (immigrant veterinarians are retrained to be veterinary nurses) – it is politics, parliament elections this year! The animal care unit will work with draft on costs.

Within the veterinary program, a project group is working to develop the schedule for the clinical parts of the new curriculum (VP-17). It is a complex work involving many people which has to be completed by autumn 2019.

ECOVE did not approve our appeal on the evaluation of our veterinary education. Therefore there will be a "Revisitation" 11-12 October. Our self-evaluation report (SER) must be revised and submitted in the beginning of September. A small group will carry out the revisitation.

The SLU planning department is now developing a new resource allocation model for the veterinary and veterinary nurse programs. A proposal was presented at the Education Board meeting in May. We have a lot of comments on the proposal, and that they will be taken into account in the final version.

Universities and colleges in Sweden shall, since last year, be responsible for the quality assessment of their education programs. SLU has developed its own model for quality assurance. By 2018, the long vocational training programs will be evaluated, ie. at VH the Animal Science/agronom and veterinary programs. In mid-October, we will have quality dialogues with SLU's pro-rector on this.

During the past year we have also intensified the contacts with stakeholders and industry about our education programs. They show a great interest in our programs, which feels good.

Finally - vacation! We all need time for recovery. A great thanks you to all who have contributed in various ways to VH's education.

I wish you all a nice summer!

Anne-Marie

Greeting from Vice Dean Margareta Emanuelson
Margareta Emanuelson, Senior Lecturer at the Department of Animal Nutrition and Management and Vice Dean responsible for collaboration within the field of farm animals at the Faculty of Veterinary Medicine and Animal Science

Collaboration at its best!

SLU's overall goal for collaboration according to our strategy is that "SLU's collaboration creates social benefits and is appreciated by stakeholders while increasing the quality of our education, research and ongoing environmental analysis". One of the sub-objectives is to develop internal forms of collaboration, so that the strength of each of SLU's different Campuses becomes an important resource for successful collaboration.

VH organized a seminar on 19 June entitled "Precision Livestock Farming and Big Data". I think we showed what power we create, when we cooperate! It really was an indication of the potentials and competencies available at SLU. Looking at each of the resources and research competencies found in Alnarp, Skara, Uppsala and Umeå they are all small, but when we put them together, it is really powerful!! Together, we can become competitive and make a difference in the research community and for Swedish agriculture. Collaboration at its best! It is my hope that all of you who went along and made the day so successful saw this and feel that we need to work more together to get through. My headache now is whether the next step is to invest resources in a larger research application in collaboration with the external networks that you all have? Think about that possibility during your summer vacation!

Collaborative work is progressing further and under Erik Fahlbeck's leadership we have now reached the goal of defining the framework for the "Samverkanslektorer", with clearer job description and assignments. We also soon have a project plan ready for "SLU Cooperation", with the goal to create a common collaborative structure for the entire SLU. In the autumn, a project group will come up with proposals, based on e.g. experiences from Partnership Alnarp. Kristina Santén is the project manager and I will participate as VH's representative with the support of Bodil Ström Holst, who contributes with expertise in sports and pet animals.

A concrete example of how we become better at cooperating within SLU is KCF, the competence center of farm management. VH has now decided to become a more active partner in this center. The structure for this is not yet clear. However, it will result in more opportunities to involve people with financial skills in our education programs as well as in research projects etc. This is something that has been asked for a long time. A group has been appointed by our Dean, who will be discussing how we best want to use the money that VH now relies on this project.

With happy summer greetings from Margareta

Greetings from Vice Dean Lena Lidfors Lena Lidfors, Professor at the Department of Animal Environment and Health and Vice Dean responsible for doctoral education and equal opportunities at the Faculty of Veterinary Medicin and Animal Science

This year at Almedalen, all future platforms will hold at least one seminar. SLU Future animals, nature and health has their seminar on the 4th of July from 10:30 to 12:00. There will be four lectures and a political debate led by Johan Beck-Friis. The Department of Clinical Sciences holds their own seminar on the theme One Health, which is linked to two of SLU's future platforms. For more information, please visit: https://www.slu.se/samverkan/samverkan-i-Sverige/slu-i-almedalen/.

Postgraduate education

During the spring semester of 2018 the Board of Postgraduate Education (FUN) at the Faculty has accepted 11 new doctoral students. Four of which are part of SLU's strategic effort on industrial graduate programs. The Board has also decided on 18 dissertations / licentiate seminars, gone through 10 mid-term follow-ups, approved 6 changes in the supervisor group, approved or credited courses for 13 PhD students, and handled a number of other matters. The use of the checklists for the admission to the postgraduate education and the application for the dissertation, which our research director Jan Hultgren has produced, have led to that the applications have become more complete. We have also introduced that all PhD students / supervisors should let the department's director of studies review the applications and sign them before they are submitted to FUN. It seems to be taking some time before everyone has this routine in place. Do not forget that your study director for postgraduate education at the department is a resource that can help you to answer questions about the regulations and any difficult documents.

Quality assurance of postgraduate education is a requirement, from UKÄ, which all universities face and eventually they come to examine. SLU had a pilot round with quality assurance last year, but this year, it is operational. Each year, faculties will have to answer two questionnaires with a number of questions regarding different aspects of the postgraduate education that must be answered. SLU's management wants these issues to be anchored all the way down to the supervisor and doctoral level. This year we gathered all study directors and FUN members to start this work, and afterwards all doctoral supervisors and PhD students were invited to give their opinions via the director of studies. I hope you had interesting discussions about the issues. All documents concerning quality assurance are now submitted to SLU's management and a meeting will be held on October 10th. Thank you to everyone that were involved in this work.

The VH Faculty does not organize its own seminars for supervisors, as the Educational Development Unit does this for the entire SLU. You have just received invitations to three exciting "Lunch colloquia for doctoral supervisors" on the 25/9, 17/10 and 15/11 at 12-13. Please take the chance to attend these lunch seminars (https://internt.slu.se/upc/courses-seminars).

Applications to FUN and questions about postgraduate education are preferably sent to: fun@slu.se

Equal opportunities

During spring, the Equal Opportunities committee has held two seminars, March 14 and April 26. The first was about "Gender and power within the academy" where Jesper Fundberg from Malmö University and Malin Rönnblom from Umeå University held much appreciated lectures and group activities where participant discussed these issues. The second seminar was about "HBTQ", where Max Hällström from RFSL held lectures on norms and norm criticism, after which the participants were invited to group discussions. The documentations from these seminars have been saved so that we can continue to work on these questions.

This autumn we also want to organize a seminar that will be held in English. We have received some suggestions on areas, but would like to receive more suggestions from your employees. Do you know anyone that lectures about matters such as: How do we work on equal terms from MeToo? How do juggle career-child-social life without getting too stressed? We have discussed arranging a seminar on how to deal with each other when you have different animal ethical views. The Committee on Equal Opportunities has its autumn meetings on September 5 and November 14. Minutes from the meetings can be obtained from the contact person for equal opportunities in each Department.

On 22nd - 23rd of November, the annual "National Equal Opportunities Conference for Universities and Colleges" is organized by Linnaeus University in Växjö. The purpose of this year's conference is to focus on integrating the gender perspective and the practical work that takes place in the Swedish universities. More information and registration is done here: https://lnu.se/forskning/konferenser/nationella-lika-villkors-konferens/.

Have you seen or heard something that you think we should know in the Committee on Equal Opportunities or would you like to advise us on activities we should arrange? Please do not hesitate to contact Lena Lidfors or Bercem Johannesson at the VH-office, Maja Malmberg at BVF or the contact person at your department.

Have a nice summer!