The senior management team is looking forward to considering the many consultation responses which have been submitted in connection with the consultation process. The deadline for submitting responses was last Friday.
It is very positive that so many employees have found the time to express their thoughts on what they feel is the right direction for the university, their faculty, department, centre or area of expertise in the administration.
Responses from individuals and non-official bodies will only be made public if permitted by their authors, while all responses from the university's official bodies will be published. Responses will be published in Danish.
As mentioned above, the deadline for submitting responses to the consultation process expired at midnight on Friday 19 September, and the senior management team is now in the process of reading and considering the responses.
On Wednesday 24 September, a plan will be announced for the ongoing process. On the same day, the consultation responses from the university's official bodies will be posted on the website together with the consultation responses submitted by other parties who have given their consent to publication.
This year's round of SDDs (Staff Development Dialogues) is planned for September, October and November for employees at Aarhus University.
For many employees, the past year has brought new challenges at the university as a workplace in the shape of cutbacks, redundancies, the problem analysis and now a consultation process on the latest changes. Consequently, the SDD may be particularly valuable for many employees this year.
The SDD is a chance to talk about one's work, development opportunities and well-being. To simplify the process and ensure a successful SDD, Aarhus University has introduced an SDD concept which is tailored to the university’s needs. It has been developed by involving representatives from the union representative system, department heads, administrative managers and AU HR. The concept also draws on experience from other universities, public institutions and private enterprises.
The SDD is a developmental tool for the benefit of both the employee and the university that is required by the university’s by-laws.
On 21 October, the Department of Economics and Business and Northwestern University are organising a conference in honour of professor and Nobel laureate Dale T. Mortensen.
Dale T. Mortensen was professor in economics at Northwestern University and was awarded the 2010 Nobel Prize for his research into markets with search frictions. He was the Niels Bohr Visiting Professor at Aarhus University in 2006, but had collaborated with researchers at AU since the end of the 1990s.
Dale T. Mortensen died on 9 January 2014.
The memorial conference will be held at the Aarhus Institute of Advanced Studies on 21 October, 8:30-17:00.
Last week, the Danish Agency for Higher Education visited Aarhus University in search of inspiration on how to improve social mobility. The visit took place in the context of Danish Minister for Higher Education and Science Sofie Carsten Nielsen's plans to collect and publish data on social mobility on individual study programmes.
At the meeting with the agency, the four faculties presented a number of measures which they have each implemented to make it easier for students to break the cycle of disadvantage. The initiatives relate to recruitment, admission and retention, but what they all have in common is that they address some of the special challenges that are faced by many of the so-called ‘mold breakers’.
The initiatives include, among other things, increasing the size of the Quota 2 intake, mentor programmes, courses in study techniques as well as projects like SubUniversity and Alpha (links in Danish).
At the meeting, the participants from Aarhus University also presented some of the challenges which they believe will result from the study progress reform in relation to social mobility.
Social mobility is one of the mandatory targets which the minister has asked universities to include in their development contracts 2015-2017.
AU has been ranked no. 96 in the QS World University Rankings 2014, which were published last week. The crucial indicator in the QS World University Rankings is ‘Academic Reputation’, which accounts for 40 per cent of the score. Here, AU has moved upward. This is also the case for two other indicators: ‘Employer Reputation’ and ‘Citations per Faculty’.
However, there has been a fall in relation to the two international indicators – ‘International staff ratio’ and ‘International student ratio’ as well as the ‘Faculty/student ratio’. This can be attributed to the increased intakes in recent years, which has meant that the number of researchers per student is falling.
Overall, AU has fallen five places relative to last year.
In addition to the overall rankings list, QS also publishes the QS World University Rankings by Faculty within five broad subject areas. Here, AU is no. 76 for Arts & Humanities, no. 64 for the Life Sciences & Medicine, and no. 62 for Social Sciences & Management.