The dean's autumn 2019 semester greeting

Dear employees,

Aarhus BSS’ most important task is to deliver research-based degree programmes of a high quality in order to ensure the employability of our graduates.

Among other things, this means that we must continuously adapt to new frameworks and conditions. These years, particularly in terms of financing where we are increasingly dependent on external funding. Apart from delivering high-quality research and teaching, our researchers must also formulate interesting research projects that external funders will also find interesting enough to finance.

Many of our researchers have already secured large and prestigious grants, and at school level, we wish to support our researchers in their efforts to secure external research funding. For that reason, we appointed Niels Mejlgaard as the school’s Associate Dean for EU Funding last year. Niels’ task is to offer various kinds of support to researchers who plan to apply for EU funding. We have also appointed a new research committee with members from all of the school’s departments. One of the tasks of the committee is to strengthen the internal peer review process of the applications. In the research committee, the applicants will receive feedback from many different angles just as they would in an external evaluation.

We have already received great feedback from the applicants involved, and I would like to take this opportunity to thank the members of the research committee for their efforts.

In terms of our degree programmes, our role in society requires us to continuously adapt our programme portfolio to meet the political demands as well as society’s need for knowledge and employees in the future. In the spring, we thus had to discontinue two degree programmes as a result of the international degree programme resizing. However, due to the tireless efforts of committed staff - and I thank you for that -, I believe that we have found good solutions for the affected students and employees.

To keep up with the developments in society, we also need to continuously develop new degree programmes and interdisciplinary collaborations. With our strong core academic fields and academic breadth, we are able meet the business community’s increasing demand for degree programmes and research that combine strong academic fields and collaboration across disciplines.

I am thus delighted that the first cand.oecon specialising in Public Policy has just graduated - congratulations, I might add - and that, before long, we will be offering elective clusters in psychology and politics on the MSc in Economics and Management. I look forward to the establishment of our future interdisciplinary Business Psychology Centre and to our brand new degree programme in Commercial and Retail Management. The programme has been developed in close collaboration with employers, who have also donated a significant amount of money for us to appoint a number of professors in the field. Finally, I am delighted that the Department of Business Development and Technology can now offer its own PhD programme giving students the opportunity to study business development and engineering – or their intersection.

The AACSB accreditation process has just been extended by one year. Within this period, we have to strengthen the quality assurance of the degree programme learning goals. We have had a constructive dialogue with AACSB on how to do so, but there is work to be done in relation to the degree programme quality assurance processes if we are to maintain the AACSB accreditation after 2020.

The Campus 2.0 process is also in full swing, and we have just completed a report clarifying the school’s wishes and needs in the new University City. I would like to thank you all again for the input you provided during last’s autumn’s consultation process.

Among other things, this spring's WPA survey showed us that as employees, you would like to know more about the work carried out in the faculty management team. For that reason, the school’s joint staff portal will from now on include news on the school’s focus areas as well as agendas and minutes from the meetings in the faculty management team.

I wish you all a great semester!

Best,

Thomas Pallesen

Watch the dean's video greeting