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A systematic work focusing on the working environment for the personnel and the student’s is an important ITM task. As we have explained in earlier blogs ITM has appointed the following experts to lead the work in their respective area of expertise:
Each of these three persons is in turn responsible for a group consisting of experts from each of ITM’s department. They meet four times a year to discuss different issues such as needs for education of personnel, smart solutions that was found by one department and that can be transferred to other departments, etc.
In addition to the above mentioned three experts, Emelie Griplund, Katarina Tersmeden and Anton Lagerbäck from Deans Office as well as Staffan Qvarnström (ITM’s main Health and safety representant) meet four times per year to discuss the overall environmental work at ITM. During our last meeting for the year we summarized the activities during 2016 in a systematic environmental plan, which will be available on the internal web soon. In addition, we made a budget for the planned activities for 2017. This budget will be presented to the ITM board for their approval. The suggested activities include:
- Courses identified by Valter, Anders and Peter to make sure that the personnel at each department obtain the suitable training.
- Courses offered to all personnel at ITM including hints on how to handle stress as well as how to use a hearth starter may be used.
- Sport activities, which were selected based on the input from those of you that had replied to the survey that was sent out (95 people): including massage, badminton, floor hockey, yoga, swimming and core.
I have corrected the exams from period 1 in the two classes I taught. Overall, the students performed very well which is a pleasure for a teacher to experience. Now, in period 2 I am involved in a class where students in the fifth year work on solving industrial problems in collaboration with industry. It is one of the most exciting courses I am involved in and I am looking forward to see their innovative solutions at the end of the semester.
As most of you I feel that December and the holiday is approaching in a rapid speed. It is also a time of the year that has its special feeling, since many people decorate their homes and streets with different lamps to counteract the darkness that this time of the year brings. Is not the LED lamp a brilliant technological innovation!?
Pär Jönsson, Vice Dean
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The dean has taken the decision that the school must establish a service centre at ITM. The work for this change has now started. The school will have three service desks: Södertälje, Sing Sing and the IM headquarters. The desks must be manned during office hours, Monday – Friday. The organisation must be in operation from April 1, 2017. Annika Lilja at DO will be the project manager until the service centre is in operation.
A first step in this work has been to talk to all administrators who, in one way or the other, will be affected by this change. Step two is that we, together within the administration, will hold a workshop on November 23-24 to get the opportunity to discuss the change but to also have a chance to influence the process as work will be done on project basis until April 1.
We will, as the project progresses, actively inform all the employees at the ITM school. A control group and a reference group are appointed. The reference group includes employees from the academic line and the school’s main safety representative.
In parallel with the manned service desks, there will be a digital input terminal for issues related to public service. Hopefully, that means a switch to digitalization for base-service issues;
- Easier for the customer
- More efficient
- A driving force on the matter
- Enhanced service level
- Availability
- Extended opening hours
- Cost-effective in the long run
- Broader and deeper skills
- Shared working
We must together find the key for adapting to the demands of service. One challenge is to find a structure for the proper flow of information so that we can constantly adjust the level of service according to the demand.
/ Christina Carlsson, Head of Administration
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Yesterday there was an award ceremony to thank our president Peter Gudmundson for his 9 years at the rudder of KTH. Labans Hage – the small area between Brinellvägen 8 and 10 – was renamed in Peter’s honour to Peters Hage, and a nice piece of art was installed reflecting Peter’s background as an elite ice-hockey player.
The first KTH Management group meeting with our new president Sigbritt Karlsson takes place on Monday afternoon. She has already announced that her ambition is to have more of strategic discussions at those meeting, and little less of just unilateral information flow. Information can be passed on more efficiently by other means, she says. The topic of discussion at this first meeting will be the “conditions and situation for young researchers”. And the corresponding background material is:
Early-career researchers need fewer burdens and more support and
Young scientists under pressure: what the data show
Another topic that our new president most likely will bring to the table is a new development plan for KTH from 2018 and onwards. For ITM, this topic will be one of the main points of discussion at the annual ITM leader’s conference which takes place January 11-12. The KTH and School development plans 2013-2016 were extended with one year due to the change of presidents. For ITM we made only minor changes to the previous plan except for a new section entitled Specific initiatives which covers a number of new strategic School initiatives which have resulted from, and been developed under, the ITM Academic Development Plan 2013‐2016. You find this plan under our intranet pages.
On Wednesday this week we had the last formal discussion with the former (by Monday) president, and this ended up in a signed ITM Activity contract (Verksamhetsuppdrag) for 2017. After some rather tough negotiations we managed to almost reach the targeted level for new initiatives (faculty positions) while preserving the funding for some “extraordinary initiatives” which we have negotiated during the year. Examples of those are cash funding for PMH and extra faculty funding during the build-up period at our Södertälje campus.
As we all have noticed, the winter is here and I hope for a cross country première during the weekend! Physical exercise in any form is good for us, so please check out the ITM Wellness activities and the ITM Calendar on our intranet.
/ Jan Wikander
Dean of School
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The Swedish Higher Education Authority (UKÄ) has been assigned by the Government to develop and implement a new model for quality evaluation of higher education. The model will be applied starting 2017 and contains four different types of assessments, for more information see the home page of UKÄ under Quality Assurance.
A pilot round of evaluating the doctoral education was performed 2016 and in January 2017 the “real” assessment starts with a number of subjects being evaluated, four of which we have at KTH and one of those at ITM: Economics (Sw. Nationalekonomi).
All subjects with a research education will eventually be assessed and we can foresee that a lot of time and effort will have to be spent on these evaluations.
The e-ISP system is up and running but we are still waiting for an update that will make it possible to get all the information from Ladok into the ISP. This update will be in place any day now. If you have questions regarding the web based ISP please email e-isp@kth.se.
/Malin Selleby, FA
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ITM has received a task from the president to lead a four year initiative on circular economy. A group has been formed at ITH led by Amir Rashid (IIP). Initially, meetings have been held with participants from the departments within ITM: Sofia Ritzen (MMK), Semida Silviera (EGI), Cali Nuur (INDEK) and me. The initial aim is to inform each other on activities that are held at different departments and to identify interesting areas of future research as well as possibilities to develop inter disciplinary courses. The activities of this group will be presented by Amir at an ITM faculty club meeting on October 24 in order to both inform interested faculty members as well as to receive feedback from them. In the next step, interested researchers from other schools will be contacted (ABE, SCI, CHE and maybe others). Our aim is to work together during these four years to form a plat form for a future collaboration regarding circular economy at a KTH level.
Personally I have also been involved in some circular economy related activities. Two weeks ago I attended a workshop on circular economy in Helsinki focusing on metals. The workshop was led by Maria Wetterstrand who has a long experience working with environmental issues related to production issues. There were also people present from Finland that work on the political side. Many technical talks on recycling of steel, copper, gold silver etc., including my own presentation focusing on steel recycling, were held. Also, the workshop illustrates that several companies have invested in recycling facilities to handle for example shredded steel scrap and electronic scrap. It was also of interest to hear that some speakers including politicians claimed that we should have production of metals and mining in Sweden in Finland since we then can make sure that we take an environmental responsibility after, for example, a mine is closed down.
Finally, I must say that it is hard to believe that we have already reached the end of period 1! I was a teacher in production of metals and fiber for the third year BSc students in the materials design program together with professor Gunnar Henriksson from the school of chemistry (CHE). This year the student visited Boliden in Skellefteå to study the production of copper at Boliden and to get informed of typical jobs that they can obtain after they have completed their education at KTH. Despite that the student had to go by bus (we could not afford flying) they were satisfied with the chance to the production facility. Overall, Boliden is a company that practices “circular economy”. Your used computers and mobile phones are melted to produce new metals. Specifically, the annual production of three important metals based on 120 000 tonnes of recycled scrap is the following:
Gold 2000 kg
Silver 32 000 kg
Copper 15 500 tonnes
So, if you wish to play a role in the circular economy you could start by recycling your electronic scrap (phones, computers, etc.) so that the valuable metals can be extracted and used to produce new products!
Pär Jönsson, Vice Dean
