A word from the dean
Dear staff
In recent weeks, I have visited the departments and the secretariat to discuss the reception of the strategy at the faculty. I would like to thank all of you who attended the online meetings and contributed the good discussions.
There were some clear trends across the faculty with a clear call to prioritize work environment, cross-collaboration and digitization. There were also some points of concern, as some finds the strategy very broadly worded and the implementation unclear. Some find that the strategy focuses too much on application-oriented research.
Within the work environment, special emphasis was placed on well-being and stress. There are two clues to this: Firstly, to look at the scope of tasks - including the administrative tasks. Partly to work with an appreciative culture for all employee groups and psychological security at work, including transparency in decision-making processes.
There is a great desire to collaborate more - from more collaboration internally at departments to collaboration across the faculty, across SDU and with external stakeholders.
IMADA is working on a model for collaboration around data-driven research. A proposal from several departments and most recently discussed in Akademisk Råd is to collaborate on interdisciplinary PhD projects - preferably with funding from the faculty, as it will be an attractive incentive for interdisciplinary research.
Establishing more collaboration across educations was also mentioned as an opportunity both to give the students a more interdisciplinary education. Digitization of our tasks has developed quickly in the past year during the pandemic. Can we preserve the good things from the pandemic? Specifically, online meetings are mentioned here, which many find effective and easier to arrange than physical meetings. It was emphasized that digitization processes must be supported, and that it must be considered that it takes time to introduce new workflows in both teaching and administration.
There was widespread concern about implementation with questions such as: Who is responsible for what? And who decides what to implement? The strategy is extensive, and therefore it is necessary to prioritize between efforts. This is done by involving relevant employee groups, e.g. through the faculty's various councils, boards and committees.
The work environment and collaboration committees and department councils are expected to play crucial roles, while e.g. IMADA as a department has taken on the task of data-driven research and teaching and the secretariat has taken the lead in terms of a new meeting culture.
Thus, the implementation will be very different depending on the task at hand. The management group plays a big role. The heads of departments will regularly discuss implementation at the departments, the vice dean in the education committee and Niels Kring with the faculty secretariat. At the same time, we are working to make the new SDUnet an important channel for communication concerning the progress of the strategy.
Basic research is central to the faculty, and our vision is to contribute to groundbreaking research across the faculty and at the global level. The purpose of the strategy is to have extra focus on areas that are strategically important to us.
There are some clear trends over time. Young students want a sustainable future. Public and private national and international foundations focus on green transition, sustainability, health and data-driven research. Both our educations and research can contribute to these trends, and we can make it even better by working strategically, together and across of departments.
After Easter we have the opportunity to reopen SDU a bit. I hope this will be a big step towards a return to SDU.
Happy Easter to all.
Marianne Holmer, dean