Have a good summer!

Dear Arts staff and students

Thank you for a wonderful party, and a special thank you to everyone who worked to make 17 June such a fantastic day of academics, entertainment and good food. I was particularly impressed by how many of our colleagues from Emdrup took the bus to Aarhus; over 500 staff members met and mingled at Kasernen. The party was not only a celebration of Tomorrow's AU; it was also a celebration of summer – especially of the summer holiday which is just around the corner. The holiday is a well-deserved and welcome time out. I'm aware that many of you have worked very hard this spring to make sure that the best from the old faculties is carried over into the new organisation, while at the same time working to create new opportunities for research, collaboration and education at Arts. I would like to thank you for your engagement in this work, which as you know will continue after the summer holiday.

While some find the pace of change at AU and Arts extremely rapid, others are impatient to get down to work in the new organisation.  We are striving to set a pace which will get everything settled as quickly as possible while still ensuring that the best possible decisions are made in the process. The café seminars held in Aarhus and Emdrup last week were one step in this decision-making process. About 150 staff and students spent an afternoon discussing the future structure of the faculty. A lot of very valuable recommendations have emerged from those discussions, and the faculty’s senior management will draw on them in the process of developing a proposal for the organisation of the faculty. We have also set up a digital discussion forum on the organisation of Arts. The report will be submitted for comment to the academic councils, liaison committees, boards of studies and student organisations at the end of August.

It's crucial that we get our structure in place at the beginning of the semester, not least on account of the coming elections to academic councils, boards of studies, PhD committees, and other elected bodies. The elections will take place in November as prescribed by AU's by-laws, which means that the composition of councils and committees must be decided by mid-September. 

To make sure that you get timely and up-to-date information on elections, decisions, and the development of the faculty, I encourage you to sign up for the newsletter. The newsletter will no longer be sent directly to all staff and students; if you want to continue receiving it in your inbox, you need to sign up.  You will also be able to read the newsletter in the Arts news archive.

A very exciting and important autumn is in store for our faculty. I hope you will all continue to participate just as actively and constructively after the summer holiday as you have done in the past months.

I wish all of you a lovely summer.

Best regards

Dean Mette Thunø