Letter From the Dean

NJ's new faculty board has just had its first meeting. New members (and old who continue) have been informed about and had the opportunity to discuss some of the faculty's most important issues, such as subject areas, teacher appointments, recruitment processes, finances and the student doubling project. These are strategic issues of the highest importance. The Faculty must in the best way be able to meet various challenges in society, such as Dean Torleif Härd described it in his dean letter before Christmas. It is about how the faculty board can provide the best conditions for research, education and collaboration.

Recruting teachers

Recruiting teachers, i.e. professors, associate senior lecturers and senior lecturers, is one of the faculty board's most important tasks, and often dominates our meetings. Decisions should be made to start recruitments, as well as ad texts and appointing external reviewers. When applicants are present and experts have submitted their assessments, the appointments board is responsible for evaluating and ranking the applicants, and to suggest whom to appoint. At our meeting we received a visit from some members from the appointments board and had a very rewarding discussion about the design of the ads that the faculty board decides on.

It is a delicate task that must be done correctly to give the appointments board the opportunity to select the best candidate as a proposal for employment. Recruitment is constantly ongoing. At the time of writing, 22 recruitments of professors, associate senior lecturers and senior lecturers are ongoing, i.e. the faculty board has in these cases decided that recruitment should take place, but decisions on employment have not yet been taken. The appointments board works hard, committed and with great skill with all these matters, and with much professional support from the faculty office.

The subjects areas

All teacher positions are linked to our subject areas, which are the faculty's strategic base. Our vision is that these subject areas should be adequately staffed with teachers. We are not there yet, but the former faculty board worked a lot on the issue. It is now the task of the new board to put its mark on what it wants to achieve and how it should be done. It is an exciting work that contains many strategic discussions, financial considerations and much more.

To double the number of students

The faculty board's work on recruiting teachers is linked to one of SLU's major projects, namely to double the number of students over ten years. A roadmap to reach the goal is now available for consultation at SLU, and I would like to remind the departments not to miss the first deadline for referral responses that is already on February 5, and which concerns the structure of our professional programmes. At the same time, other work is ongoing on the doubling project.

Concept proposals for new programs should be developed by the faculties' boards of educations (PN) based on the large number of proposals received from the entire SLU in the autumn. I have already had contact with you at the departments about this, and this work is now continuing. The design of the concept proposals is largely dependent on cooperation with the departments. In the end, it is the education board (UN) that decides which proposals to proceed with.

The honorary doctors

Finally, I would like to mention that the faculty board has decided on new guidelines for the nomination of honorary doctors at the faculty. More information will soon be available, but worth noting is that proposals for honorary doctors can now be submitted by the faculty's election assembly and must be submitted no later than April 1 to the dean. We hope for many suggestions! The NJ faculty would like to appoint more persons who have been important for our activities to honorary doctors.

With the wish for a good cooperation during 2019.

Pär Forslund, Deputy Dean