Aarhus University is now in the process of rectifying an error that means that a number of graduates who have taken a main subject and a subsidiary subject at different faculties since 2008 may be short 30 ECTS credits. Because the prescribed time to degree for their combined degree programmes is extended, graduates need an extra 30 ECTS credits for their subsidiary subjects in order for their degree programmes to qualify them to teach at upper secondary schools.
AU apologises for this error. A lot of effort is being made to find out just how many of our graduates have actually been affected by this. The affected graduates will be offered a very flexible plan for earning the additional required 30 credits.
The case was reported in the media on Monday, 19 November.
All Master’s diplomas held by graduates are valid. Moreover, this error is of no significance to graduates who have completed the required teacher’s training course or who have no plans to teach at upper secondary school level.
The faculty management team at Arts has been working on establishing a more detailed plan on how to reduce admissions to English-language degree programmes at the faculty, in line with the government’s demands.
The Faculty of Arts has a large number of Master’s degree programmes and tracks taught in English, in many of which international students are enrolled. This means that the decision on international degree programme resizing will have far-reaching consequences for a lot of Master’s degree programmes and lines. The primary changes are that some English-language programmes will instead be taught in Danish, and Danish language skills will be introduced as an admission requirement.
The election result for this year’s university elections have now been announced. The student representatives on the board will be Ditte Marie Thomsen from the Student Council’s lead candidates and Karoline Poulsen from Conservative Students. They will take over the seats currently held by Line Dam Westengaard and Sune Koch Rønnow from the Student Council. Ditte Maria Thomsen has been elected for the period 1 February 2019 to 31 January 2021, while Karoline Poulsen has been elected for the period 1 February 2019 to 31 January 2020.
This year, all students at AU could cast their votes for student representatives to the AU Board, the academic councils and the boards of studies, while PhD students could also vote for representatives for AU’s PhD committees.
The total voter participation this year was 18.49 per cent. In total, there were nine contested elections at the university, i.e. elections in which it was possible to vote for different candidates. There were also 63 uncontested elections and 19 cancelled elections.
The risk of cyber attacks is increasing sharply. Aarhus University uses many IT systems and stores huge volumes of data, so it needs to upgrade its defences against data loss or theft and IT downtime. Given this fact, Aarhus University will be investing DKK 32.7 million in enhancing IT security between 2018 and 2022, and DKK 7.2 million will be set aside each year for regular upgrades from 2023 onwards.
The theme for the Aarhus University annual MatchPoints Seminar in 2019 is leadership. The upcoming conference will be offered in partnership with the Crown Prince Frederik Centre for Public Leadership, and it will focus on what constitutes good leadership within public, private and voluntary organisations, as well as on how managers can develop their leadership skills. Attendees will include HRH Crown Prince Frederik, Professor Arnold Bakker, European Commissioner Margrethe Vestager, Professor Lotte Bøgh Andersen and a variety of other researchers, managers, politicians and opinion-formers.
The conference is aimed at managers and others who are helping to perform management tasks or have a general interest in management but have no formal management qualifications.
Saturday, 25 May is the day on which leadership training will be available in small groups, under titles such as “political leadership”, “organisational leadership development” and “distributed leadership”.
Registration for the MatchPoints Seminar 2019 opens on 14 January 2019.
The university is focusing on retaining students and reducing dropout rates. A conference on dropouts was held at the university recently and attended by Vincent Tinto from the US, an expert in the field. Health is now focusing on retention as well, at the faculty’s Education Fair to be held on 4 December. Charlotte Ringsted, Vice-dean for Education at Health, has chosen to focus in particular on how Aarhus University can do a better job of retaining students in their first few semesters. The themes of the day will be first year didactics and pedagogics.
Everyone is welcome to attend.
Up to 15 AIAS-COFUND II Marie Skłodowska-Curie Fellowships are available at the Aarhus Institute of Advanced Studies (AIAS), and AU researchers are encouraged to pass on information about this to their international colleagues. Applications for AIAS-COFUND fellowships are welcomed from exceptional foreign junior and senior researchers with a minimum of two years of post-doctoral research experience. Applicants from all fields and disciplines are encouraged to apply.
The application deadline for AIAS-COFUND Fellowships is: 12 noon on 23 January 2019.
22 November heralds the start of the first of the four star lectures, where four researchers from Aarhus University will be highlighting their research. The senior management team invites all staff and students to attend the lectures and will be providing refreshments during the break.
Lectures are in Danish. Registration is now well under way, but places are still available.
The lectures available are: