Letter from Dean Allan Flyvbjerg

To all members of staff at Health

Dear All

Yesterday – Wednesday 9 March 2011 – the unified senior management group announced its decisions regarding Aarhus University’s academic organisation and a number of additional resolutions – including the area of administrative organisation.

For us here at Health, these decisions have a number of consequences, and I will list the most sweeping effects here:

• Management: The faculty is headed by the dean in collaboration with four vice-deans of research, talent development, knowledge exchange and education, as well as the head of the secretariat for the deans and the head of the administration centre for Health. The faculty management consists of this circle along with the five heads of department.
• The six biomedical departments are combined in one Department of Biomedicine.
• The Department of Sport Science, which belonged to the former Faculty of Science, is transferred in terms of management to theDepartment of Public Health, while the degree programmes and physical location remain unchanged.
• The degree programme in health sciences engineering (graduate engineer and Master’s degree programmes) will come under Science and Technology in future.
• All departments are requested to submit a re-assessment of their respective internal academic organisation and management structure by mid-2011.
• Committees: At faculty level, the Academy Council, cooperation committee and occupational health and safety committee are retained. A new Advisory Board is appointed, represented by users and employers of the faculty’s education, research and other knowledge-related products.
• Three strategic SUND forums are appointed for research/talent development, knowledge exchange and education.
• There is still a Graduate School of Health Sciences at the faculty. It is headed by the vice-dean of talent development.
• Although a strategic forum for education is established, a number of boards of studies for individual degree programmes are maintained.
• Staff at the faculty are expected to be able to take part in several of the high-profile interdisciplinary research centres that AU will focus on.
• The faculty itself will also support the cultivation of a number of large and medium-sized interdisciplinary research centres.
• In terms of buildings, the immediate future is dominated by new construction next to the Steno Museum for parts of the new Department of Biomedicine, as well as the continued renovation of all the laboratories and the building and fitting out of facilities for research and teaching, etc. at Aarhus University Hospital in Skejby.
• In terms of administration, the faculty and departments will mainly be served in future by AU’s unified administration with a faculty-based administration centre. A smaller secretariat for the deans will be established, as well as administrative service at department/centre level.

The senior management group’s decisions also cover other quite important conditions, and I would like to refer to the material submitted in its entirety so that all details are included (see www.au.dk/en/about/changes/).

Four of the five head of department positions have been announced with an application deadline of 31 March 2011, while the position of head of the Department of Clinical Medicine will also be announced at a later date.

In the process leading to the announcement of the decisions, the material was thoroughly prepared. The starting point included proposals I made in December 2010 regarding the faculty’s academic organisation. The many comments I received from all areas of the faculty and from the Central Denmark Region were especially incorporated and weighed up. I would once more like to thank you for the many important and constructive comments, which were of great value throughout the process.

I have sent out invitations to a number of meetings in the immediately forthcoming period, and I hope to see as many people as possible. The meetings will go through the effects of the decisions here at Health in their entirety and in a number of partial aspects. The sequence of the meetings is listed in the attached PDF file.

As stated in the timetable, the vice-dean of education will meet with representatives from the faculty’s student organisations and the medical students’ council, while the vice-dean of talent development will meet with the PhD committee.
In addition, I can already say that I intend to visit all the clinical departments under Aarhus University Hospital during the first half of 2011.

We look forward to seeing as many of you as possible in the week ahead.

Kind regards
Dean Allan Flyvbjerg
Read more at www.au.dk/en/about/changes/