Competences are crucial in new strategy for education
On 26 January 2021, the faculty's management team approved the overall strategy for the Faculty of Science in the years 2021-2025.
The faculty's education programmes are a central part of the strategy, and the vision states:
– The Faculty of Science wants to maintain and strengthen the position of our education programmes in the Danish STEM education landscape. With a focus on skills, the faculty wants to take a big step forward for our education programmes, with significant positive effects on both admission, retention and employment.
Increased competence awareness among students and teachers
According to Vice Dean Poul Nielsen, the strategy must help solve two key challenges for the faculty. Two challenges that he believes we have a both financial and moral obligation to solve. The first challenge is to get our graduates into employment quickly. Unfortunately, many science graduates take too long time finding their first job, and this is a problem:
– In recent years, we have put a lot of effort into equipping the students for the labour market, e.g. through career events and communication about job opportunities, and this certainly brings us a bit of the way as well. However, I am convinced that the strategy's focus on competencies and competence awareness will be crucial. A successful job search is thus conditional on being aware of one's competencies, of course the professional skills, but also complementary competencies within e.g. collaboration, dissemination, creative thinking, innovation, feedback, etc. These skills are to some extent also acquired today from a degree in science, but we can cultivate them more and we can increase awareness of their value.
Desire for more dialogue with companies and students
Poul Nielsen and the Education Committee want to expand the collaboration with companies and other stakeholders to a greater extent:
– Collaboration with companies is also absolutely crucial. These are already part of the departments' advisory boards, but more is needed. At BMB, for example, they have started to systematically invite companies into teaching, which I think is a really great initiative.
Poul Nielsen explains why we must help graduates into jobs:
“I believe that now is the time for us, as a responsible educational institution, to dig a little deeper to solve the challenge of employment. Here I am thinking very much about how we get an even closer collaboration with our stakeholders, i.e. companies and high schools, but to a large extent also the students themselves. Increased collaboration, combined with an increased awareness of competence, means that students experience more contact with the labour market during their studies, which improves their chances of getting a job. At the same time, students will thrive better if they are more involved in the dialogue about their particular education programmes”.
Desire for better retention of students
The second challenge that the strategy must contribute to solving is retention:
–We really want to find a way where we can better retain our students all the way through their studies. With the new focus on competencies and clearer contact with companies, the connection between the time of study and the later employment will become clearer. If the students can better see what they achieve from their studies, it can help them to see perspectives and purposes in periods when it feels difficult or unmanageable, Poul Nielsen explains.
The next step is in the Education Committee
Poul Nielsen is very much looking forward to the work that will now take place in the wake of the publication of the strategy:
– During the discussions in the Education Committee, I have sensed a great deal of support for the education strategy, which also extends out into the professional environments. In the strategy, we have found something that can unite us and create a common direction. I experience that there is great interest from everyone to do what is now needed to ensure increased employment and a better retention of our students, and that makes me optimistic about the further process.
The next step has already been agreed for the strategy. In the spring of 2021, the Education Committee will start a mapping of which competencies, or 21st century science skills, as the Education Committee has chosen to call them, the faculty as a whole should focus on. The expectation is that it will then be discussed how we best convey the competence message and how we integrate it into the mindset of students and teachers.
In parallel with this, various initiatives are already underway, which focus on the involvement of stakeholders. For example, a well-being project with student involvement has been initiated, a task force will investigate the mathematics skills taught in upper secondary school and thereby improve the transition to university, and we are collaborating with the humanities on a research project that will shed light on reasons for dropout.