Standing firm when everything is moving

By Hanne Søndergaard Birkmose, Dean

Universities are living organisations. We grow, adapt and are affected by decisions made both internally in our own councils and committees and externally far away from campus. In this reality, the pace can feel fast: New reform tracks, new expectations for quality and relevance, new collaboration opportunities and changing funding frameworks. The pace is fast, but this is necessary to ensure that we continue to live up to our ambitions for quality and relevance.  

Reform initiatives and institutional plans that call for close coordination with employers, new educational formats and a sharper focus on how we can best contribute to both regional and national skills needs are agendas that have characterised the education sector. Reviewing the past year, we have been working on the graduate reform, which sets political ambitions for the educational landscape. The demographic development, meaning that in the coming years we will be facing smaller youth cohorts, has implications for our own ambitions for a quality boost to ensure that we continue to have competitive, high-quality programmes.

The ambition for attractive and relevant programmes is also important for the development work on digital literacy in recent years, where a new module across all BA programmes will enhance students' digital skills from the study start in 2026. In the area of continuing education, a lot of effort has been put into our new board education in collaboration with Børsen, which will be launched in March.  

We have also worked on organisational changes to ensure that we have a robust framework for carrying out our core tasks in both the academic and administrative areas, and that we can continue to deliver on SDU's strategic focus on quality. One focus area has been the continued consolidation of the newest department at the Faculty - the Department of Business and Sustainability. We have also reduced our activities in Slagelse as a result of the decision to close Campus Slagelse, and we will soon be entering the last semester of teaching at this campus. In the administrative area, the reorganisation of SDU's study administration (OSU) has been completed, and a number of employees have been given new tasks and will be part of new working communities.

The lengthy and thorough quality work with AACSB has also led to a number of changes, while at the same time giving our overall organisation and our programmes a major quality boost. This work will be a cornerstone in the future work on quality, not only for the future work of establishing an independent business school, but also for the new Faculty of Social Sciences.

At the same time, we face a changing world order where geopolitics, trade barriers, misinformation and societal security not only affect our view of the world around us, but also the research agendas that characterise the funding landscape. In such a world order, social science research is more important than ever, because good research makes us smarter about the world and the things that happen around us. The many talented researchers at the Faculty of Business and Social Sciences already contribute significantly to these important agendas.

The strong result on external funding in 2025 is a great recognition of the value we create through our research. In 2025 we have upgraded our research support efforts to ensure that we can continue to deliver relevant research at a high international level. This brings research support closer to the academic environments while maintaining the specialised knowledge that is crucial for us to achieve our ambition of increasing the absorption of excellence funds. We will also maintain and strengthen our efforts to ensure that social science research has a central place in the development of society, so that we not only focus on academic impact, but also continue to work on creating value for and with society.   

When everything is moving, it is important that we keep relevance and quality at the core of everything we do. Standing firm, even when so much is changing around us, doesn't mean saying no to change, but that we dare to say yes to the right opportunities with care.

Strategic stance - our compass

I see our strategic position as our common compass that helps us navigate wisely. To be more concrete, I have grouped it into three key focus areas:

• Clarity on core competences and quality

  Our departments and research groups must be able to formulate, develop and show what constitutes scientific quality in our organisation and use this as a foundation for recruitment, advancement and development.

• Coherence between research, education and the outside world

  We must continue to strengthen the integration between our research and teaching so that students encounter the latest knowledge and learn the methods behind it. At the same time, we must bring practice closer through partnerships, cases and collaborations that provide relevance.

• Prioritising with foresight

  Changes in funding, educational frameworks and collaboration require that we dare to prioritise. This applies to projects, investments and time. It's about choosing the initiatives that best strengthen our academic excellence, our study environments and our contribution to society.

We are in a strong position

We are in the midst of a time when much is subject to change, but also a time when our professionalism, our curiosity and our shared commitment are making a real difference. I am proud of the direction we are moving in and grateful for the effort that is put into research, education and collaboration every day. Together, we are creating a Faculty, and soon two, that stands strong, even when the world around us is in motion.