To all the staff at the Faculty of Art...

...and to all the students

I have just signed the new staff agreement on standard working hours with the joint union representative, Marie Vejrup. As I write there’s something resembling snow tumbling from the sky. And the Christmas cards have started to arrive from all over the world – not only by email, but also by good old-fashioned postman. In other words, it’s time to send you my traditional Christmas greeting.

Let me start by thanking both staff and students for all their hard work in 2017. The year started with some pretty ambitious targets aimed in particular at ensuring long-term financial sustainability for the Faculty of Arts. And I’m delighted to report that we have made great progress in our pursuit of these targets. Thanks to our joint efforts – and not least thanks to the students – we have achieved our goals in terms of study progress, and have once again avoided incurring any fines owing to students failing to complete their degree programmes on time.

It’s also worth mentioning that we managed once again to attract some pretty healthy funding for our research projects. So from a financial point of view 2017 has been a good year, helping us to face the future with some degree of confidence.

However, I wouldn’t exactly say that the world around us stood still in 2017. The government introduced a new management reform, including a new type of framework contract. At the end of the year there was a new reform of the way universities are financed, and a national language strategy was introduced as well. It’s too soon to reliably predict the consequences of all these changes, but we feel convinced that they will not prevent us from achieving our long-term targets.

The language strategy contains a number of fascinating perspectives, and will undoubtedly have an impact on the faculty as a whole in 2018 – and on the School of Communication and Culture and the School of Culture and Society in particular. The same thing applies to what’s known as the “small subject scheme”, which is part of the language strategy. And for the past year our new colleagues from Aarhus BSS have been contributing to the development of our language degree programmes.

Our academic achievements have been impressive. Our researchers have produced a great deal of outstanding research once again. For instance, my bookshelves now proudly boast a major work on the Reformation – a topic which was one of our research highlights in 2017.

Aarhus was a European Capital of Culture in 2017, and we enjoyed an extremely fruitful partnership with the city in this connection. Under Anne Marie’s expert leadership, and thanks to our strong research environments, our graduate school has won a great deal of respect.  And the Danish School of Education has also made its mark in the public debate – most recently in connection with the PIRLS study of reading abilities among schoolchildren. DPU was also involved in the ICCS study, which showed that Danish schoolchildren are world leaders in terms of their knowledge of democracy and citizenship. And with regard to our degree programmes, a lot of effort has been invested in our accreditation project.

Even though Aarhus University and the University of Copenhagen have only been awarded conditional accreditation, we have already started to introduce our quality system. This has been done with a degree of collaboration and professionalism that has been widely acknowledged. We have also celebrated two anniversaries: our degree programmes in theology and the history of ideas. And finally, I truly believe that we have finally worked out how to organise a great summer party! I look forward to having the chance to play the role of barman once again at the summer party in 2018.

Our negotiations with union representatives regarding amendments of our agreement on working hours have been extremely rewarding. Despite the tight framework restricting our freedom of movement, both sides have displayed a genuine desire to find joint solutions. The same is true of the work done by our liaison committee and working environment committee, where views are always exchanged in a frank and open-hearted manner.

In 2018 the rector has asked the management team to put two issues on the agenda in particular: constructive communication, and a healthy working environment. The Academic Council has also had a number of fruitful discussions, making a very active contribution to the debate on joint AU standards for appointing academic staff. Their professional and constructive input has helped to ensure that the new standards should suit all subject environments across the faculty. And while I’m on the subject of teamwork: it’s been wonderful to see how smoothly the process of moving offices around the Nobel Park has been carried out.

I hope you are all facing 2018 with a healthy dose of optimism. Because there’s every reason to be optimistic. The faculty has continued the excellent progress achieved in recent years, and it now seems highly likely that our ambitious plan for consolidating the Faculty of Arts will succeed.

Thank you for all your hard work, and a Happy Christmas to you all.

Johnny Laursen
Dean
Faculty of Arts, Aarhus University