In English further down.

Välkommen tillbaks till jobbet!

Kära kollega, först och främst vill jag välkomna dig tillbaks till KTH efter semestern. På grund av reserestriktioner antar jag att du har tillbringat sommaren i Sverige. Kanske har du till och med upptäckt några nya guldkorn i ditt närområde? Hur som helst så hoppas jag att du har fått chansen att vila och njuta och gjort dig redo att kicka igång terminen med ny kraft!

KTH:s ledning har precis lämnat nya besked om att vi ska ha som målsättning att arbeta minst två dagar i veckan på campus om omständigheterna tillåter det. Våra enhetschefer är än mer viktiga i och med att de leder arbetet med att planera verksamheten. Nya grepp måste tas. Det kan exempelvis vara så att arbetstiden på KTH planeras så att personal inte åker i rusningstrafik. Det kommer alltså innebära att det blir en kombination av distansarbete och arbete på campus samt att möten till stor del kommer att vara digitala även i höst.

Du som redan har börjat arbeta på KTH campus har nog inte kunnat missa våra nya studenter. ”Nollorna” välkomnas av både ITM-personal och faddrar och vi kan höra dem sjunga och spela musik precis som tidigare år. Ibland känns det nästan som vanligt, men i själva verket är situationen långt ifrån vanlig.

Undervisning kommer att fortsätta ske digitalt med vissa inslag av salsundervisning i en del kurser. Vårt fokus är att låta de nya studenterna på grund- och mastersnivå ha vissa föreläsningar på våra campus. Det är extra viktigt att de nya studenterna får en bra start i sin nya studiemiljö för att de ska kunna gå hela vägen i mål och få ut sin examen.

Avslutningsvis tänkte jag dela med mig av ett par semesterminnen. Jag var faktiskt större delen av tiden hemma i trädgården, där jag odlar grönsaker och bär av olika slag. De har jag njutit av i sommar! Dessutom har jag lärt mig äta ogräs som jag vanligtvis kastar i komposten. En tripp till Hälsingland med familjen blev det också, där vi vandrade i de vackra skogarna kring Harsa och besökte en av mina favoritplatser Järvzoo. Lite fiske blev det också och jag lyckades få upp ett par öringar ur den klara fjällsjön, som ni kan se på bilderna.

/ Pär Jönsson, Skolchef vid ITM

Welcome back to work!

Dear colleagues,
I wish to warmly welcome all of you back to KTH after your vacations. Due to the travel restrictions, I assume that most of you have spent your vacations in Sweden? Maybe you even discovered some new lovely places in your nearby area? In any case, I hope that you now had had a chance to relax and enjoy and are ready to start this new working period with some extra energy!

Today, KTH’s management gave new information that we should work at least two days a week on campus if the circumstances allow. Our unit managers are very important in that they lead the work of planning the business. New ways must be tried. It is possible, for example, that working hours at KTH are planned so that staff do not travel in rush hour traffic. Thus, there will be a combination of working from home and on site this autumn, and meetings will mainly be digital.

Some of you that has started to work on site has already seen that the new students have arrived at KTH. The, so called, zeros (nollor) are taken care of both by the ITM personnel as well as by the older students. We can hear singing and music as usual this time of the year. It is almost like one feel that things are as normal, but they are not. Teaching will continue to take place by using digital tools even though we now start to introduce class room teaching in some courses. The focus is to let the new Bachelor and Masters students to attend some classes at KTH. It is especially important to make sure that the new Bachelor students get a good start in their new study environment to ensure a successful study progress.

Finally, I wish to share something of what I have done this summer. I actually spent most of the time in my home. We grow lots of vegetables and berries so I have enjoyed eating them as well as learned how to eat some of the weeds that I normally remove and throw away. I took a short trip to Hälsingland with my family to walk in the beautiful forests around Harsa and to visit one of my favorite places in Sweden, namely Järvzoo (jarvzoo.se). I also did some fishing and was able to catch some trout in a really beautiful mountain lake, as you can see from the pictures.

/ Pär Jönsson, Head of the ITM School

Dear colleagues,

We have entered the month of May, which is supposed to be an official spring month. However, the weather forecast is still prediction cold weather this coming weekend so it is hard to say. At the same time, most of you work from home under these new circumstances where you are responsible for sharing your office and private life. As I mentioned before, I am very happy about how well things work despite the new situation. It seems like all of us have been forced to take a crash course in digitalization for dummies. This does not mean that we master all tasks, but that we made huge leaps compared to the beginning of the year.

It is now clear that an idea that was initiated at ITM has convinced the whole KTH that all of us need some stimulation in our daily life while working at home. Thus, KTH will now launch the KTH ACTIVE TOGETHER event as explained in this short statement:

May 18 – June 15 KTH organizes the ”KTH ACTIVE TOGETHER”! It is a fun challenge where we cheer and support each other to work out. Everyone can join on equal terms, regardless of fitness level.

KTH Active Together

Finally, I wish to share a movie I made together with the ITM communication personnel. My purpose is to inspire all of you working from home to become more active and to join the KTH ACTIVE TOGETHER event. Note, the film is not any “monkey business” or “fake news”!

https://play.kth.se/media/We%2B+with+P%C3%A4r+J%C3%B6nsson/0_l6h4n9p1

/Pär Jönsson, Head of the ITM School

Times is passing very quickly and we are soon leaving the month of April. This is a month were we know the weather is changing from summer weather to winter weather. Typically, we wear shorts and T-shirts one day and the next day we rapidly need to change clothes and remove ice from the car window. Soon entering May we long for warmer weather, but mostly we long for an improvement in the corona-virus situation. Some of the people at ITM has caught the virus, but not too many to my knowledge. A few of them has already come back to work.

In order not to spread the virus most of the ITM personnel work from home. We have heard mixed signals saying that “it is great to work from home” to that “I am bored to work from home”. Have patience, those of you longing for a new exciting activity will be happy. The administration at ITM led by Anna Blendow has pitched a competition and challenged the other schools at KTH. They thought it was a great idea, so keep your eyes open for We+, you will soon have more information about this.

Finally, I have one suggestion to those of you longing to celebrate the end of winter and to sing for the coming of spring: sing while watching the bonfire on Walpurgis on television!

/ Pär Jönsson, Head of the ITM School

ITM School’s Faculty Assembly

Dear colleagues,
This time I wish to bring up the subject of making your voice heard in a democratic society. This message is especially directed to all teachers that have the possibility to vote for members to the new ITM School’s Faculty Assembly (Skolkollegium), which the KTH President has decided to initiate. Each of our five schools should have their own Faculty Assembly that will interact with the Faculty Council of KTH to discuss issues relating to the quality of education, research and community interaction. An electoral roll has been created and e-mails have been sent to all teachers on the roll.

The task is that each person should vote for one woman and one man from each department. At the end of the day, we will have 14 people from our 7 departments that will make up this new Faculty Assembly. At ITM, we started this procedure earlier this year by asking the teachers to go to our Student Offices to vote. However, very few people voted and we could not finish the voting before the corona crises started. Since then the ITM administration has tried to find solutions on how to carry out the voting in a digital setup. Since no one at KTH could help us, we had to get external help. Thus, now we have made it possible to hold the election and you can find more details in this link: Vote for the new ITM School Faculty Assembly

I kindly ask each teacher to vote before the deadline on Sunday April 28.

Digital exams

We have been able to give all exams during the re-exam period. Currently, Anna Jerbrant and her colleagues working with education are evaluating how it went to learn from both good and bad examples. At the same time, the departments have already started to plan for the exam period at the end of this semester. ITM will organize a large number of exams. Here, the Department Heads will designate faculty as well as PhD students to supervise these exams (tentavakter).  In addition, we will also need to help each other from different departments where it will be necessary. In these times, we need to collaborate even more in order to fulfill our duties!

Working time and leisure time

Finally, I wish to say that many of you have suffered from working at home for a number of weeks now. We have clear signals from you that it both has been boring to work from home as well as hard to differentiate between working time and leisure time. My advice is to fix a working schedule per day and let your closest manager know when you sign in and sign out to, create a more structured day. Also, do not forget to enjoy the wonderful spring on your leisure time!

/Pär Jönsson, Head of the ITM School