Author
My last input this week as a rookie blogger is more of a reflection on the “job” as GA at the ITM School. What most of you don’t know is that the assignment as GA at ITM should correspond to 40 %, i.e. two work days a week. It is thus not a full time job if anyone thinks so. I am also responsible for a number of PhD students, I teach several courses, handles a couple of international tasks and collaborations, attends board meetings, holds invited talks at conferences and so on, just like any other professor at ITM. Today, for example, I am on the evaluation board of a PhD at the school of Chemical engineering. This means that my calendar is permanently filled, every day, all the time. Sometimes it’s a mess. This will inevitably lead to double or even triple bookings and one has to prioritize one meeting over another, all the time, making some people disappointed or even irritated now and then. A lot of preparations for lectures and meeting have to be done in weekends or evenings. I would therefore like to take this opportunity to thank all supporting people in our organization that make my work life bearable. Without the great staff at our student office with Andreas in the lead it would be impossible and without our assistant GA, Catharina it would also be impossible. I would also like to thank our PA´s for the 5yr programs that takes on a big responsibility to maintain quality and relevance through constant change and development. I guess we all need a break for x-mas and right now I think I need it more than anyone else.
/ Per Lundqvist, GA
Author
Dear colleagues,
we have had some busy weeks preparing for new exiting projects improving our educational activities in the spring. One important project to be undertaken next year at school level is to map the progression of knowledge, skills and competences in Sustainability in our master programs. In a work-shop last week several of the master programs at ITM met and discussed the way forward. It is our common conclusion after the work-shop that a lot of good activities are there already but we need to find the appropriate language to highlight it enough. In other words – we need to make all our good efforts more visible. But there is also more work to be done of course. Other important activities have been the start of joint JML-projects with our student sections. Our Vice-GA Catharina Erlich is taking good care of that in collaboration with Sissi Rizko.
Our school is also a more safer work place now since your GA (and some other colleagues) have taken the Heart-and-Lung-Saving-Course. Now we can even operate the Heart-starter but we hope it will never be needed of course. If you have not taken the course, and there is still a chance – do it! It is well worth the time.
/Per Lundqvist, GA
Author
When approaching a new year, each of the KTH schools signs a contract with our rector about the next year’s activities. On the educational side our mission is rather stable from year to year in terms of number new students and target numbers for graduations. For 2016 there is one major new activity, namely the start-up of the new BSc/MSc program on Industrial engineering and sustainability. The new program will be hosted by our campus in Södertälje. Associate professor Pernilla Ulfvengren has been appointed as program manager. Take a look at the program.
On the research side the operations contract is subject to more of “negotiations” about new research initiatives and new faculty positions which the different ITM departments put forward. If approved, new initiatives are usually funded for a period of two to five years. The process is roughly as follows;
- Our rector announces the amount of financial resources that are available for new initiatives for the coming year and which the central priorities are. The total amount is determined on the one hand by any changes in the resources allocated to KTH from the ministry of education and on the other hand by the amount set free by earlier initiatives that end. For 2016 45 MSEK where available for the whole of KTH.
- The ITM departments propose to the School which new initiatives they would like to see. Based on these proposals a rather transparent and open discussion and prioritization is taking place in the ITM management group. After this, a final prioritized list is defined as the ITM proposal to the rector. For 2016 ITM submitted a list with 17 different initiatives amounting to 10.3 MSEK for 2016 and 48.8 MSEK for the period 2016-2020.
- The rector’s office (rector, dean, accounting….) then goes through proposals from all the schools and comes back with a proposed operations contract for each school. What the rector proposed for ITM for 2016 is an exception in the sense that the proposal goes beyond what we expected. The allocation in the contract is 9.9 MSEK for 2016 and 41.1 MSEK for the period 2016-2020.
The list of funded initiatives is:
| Typ |
Benämning |
Per/år |
Antal år |
Total |
Institution |
| Miljöstöd |
Kyl- och värmepumpsteknik |
750 |
4 |
3000 |
EGI |
| Centrum |
DMMS |
1000 |
5 |
5000 |
IIP |
| Lektor |
Industrial marketing |
900 |
4 |
3600 |
INDEK |
| Bitr lektor |
Additiv tillverkning |
750 |
4 |
3000 |
MSE |
| Bitr lektor |
Cloud robotics |
750 |
4 |
3000 |
IIP |
| Bitr lektor |
System och komponentdesign /additiv |
750 |
4 |
3000 |
MMK |
| Bitr lektor |
Förnybara energikällor |
750 |
4 |
3000 |
EGI |
| Bitr lektor |
Pulvermetallurgi/Snabba stelningsprocesser |
750 |
4 |
3000 |
MSE |
| Bitr lektor |
Mekatronik /additiv |
750 |
4 |
3000 |
MMK |
| Bitr lektor |
Additiv tillverkning |
750 |
4 |
3000 |
IIP |
| Bitr lektor |
Hållbarhet och industriell dynamik |
750 |
4 |
3000 |
INDEK |
| Satsning |
Post-docs Högtemperaturlab |
500 |
5 |
2500 |
MSE |
| Bitr lektor |
Energi och utveckling |
750 |
4 |
3000 |
EGI |
/Jan Wikander, Dean of School
Author
Being FA (director of 3rd cycle studies) and professor means that my schedule is usually quite dense. Last week me and my PhD-student Sedi, organized a small international workshop dedicated to the development of a new generation of thermodynamic data for the elements – clearly an activity that had very little to do with being FA. Fortunately, since mid-September I have a vice FA, Rahmatollah Khodabandeh. Rahmat is an associate professor at the Department of Energy Technology and we now share the duties as FA. We have divided the work such that Rahmat takes care of the students in the doctoral programs Energy & Environmental systems (EGI), Production Engineering (IIP), Machine Design (MMK) and I take care of Industrial Economics & Management (Indek) and Engineering Materials Science (MSE). Rahmat will update the ITM home page concerning doctoral studies and I take care of the rest of the work e.g. the annual PhD-student conference.
The PhD-student conference is an annual lunch to lunch conference for the PhD students at ITM with priority given to new students. Every year there is a specific theme, 2015 it was Gender Equality and Diversity. Prof. Anna Wahl was invited to talk about gender and diversity in organizations and Pelle Axnäs’ theater group gave a much appreciated interactive performance on the same theme. It was entertaining but had serious undertones and both the talk and the performance initiated very interesting discussions. The students that participated seemed to appreciate the conference and its theme and it was suggested that the theme should be fixed to gender equality and diversity since it is an important issue that concerns us all. Does this seem like a good idea?
/ Malin (FA)
Author
We have a challenging time ahead us to recruit faculty to meet the future demands in teaching, research and innovation. How do we compete with other universities to attract the “brains”, “rocket scientists”, “innovators” and “pedagocical wizards”? There are of course many parameters that we need to address to accomplish this. Personally, I think we have to start from offering an attractive working environment that allows for a diversity of competences and people. If people “love” what they do they will make a better job. This, in turn will create an impact within KTH as well as outside KTH.
It is also necessary to make sure that the leadership supports the faculty so that they can fulfil their duties at KTH such as teaching, research, administration, etc. In addition, the faculty needs to have the possibilities to maintain and develop their national and international collaborations. These external contacts are of the outmost importance, for example when we try to attract new talented faculty.
When it comes to recruit new personnel it is very important that ITM supports the departments when they wish to hire new faculty. Therefore, I am very happy to let you know that we have recruited a new administrator besides Gülten Baysal at the Deans Office working with faculty recruitments, namely Anton Lagerbäck. His work will be devoted to all kinds of faculty recruitments. Thus, I am convinced that our service to our customers, the departments, will improve in the future.
I must also say that KTH has introduced new routines on how recruitments should be handled. We are trying to learn these routines to make sure that we can cut down the handling times for our recruitments. Finally, I should mention something about our recruitments. Roughly two years ago we identified that 17 professors would be retired within five years. Therefore, all departments initiated a work to identify new areas where new assistant professors need to be hired. Currently, this is ongoing at five out of six departments.
At the sixth department in Södertälje something bigger is going on! We are preparing for a dramatic expansion to extend TMT Södertälje from being not only an excellent teaching unit to also becoming a research unit. This development is led by the department head Kristina Palm. Together with me and colleagues from Industrial Production and INDEK she is preparing for a hiring of seven! New faculty the coming six months. Be sure to follow the exciting development that is taking place in Södertälje in the future.
/Pär, vice Dean
