The Aarhus University Board has held its final meeting for 2019. Board members adopted the new Strategy 2020-2025 for Aarhus University.
The University Board expressed their great support for the strategy. There was praise for the draft strategy and, not least, the process at the university up to the board's approval. During the consultation process, many employees and students submitted their comments, and these led to some very relevant adjustments to the strategy. The meeting also stressed that the strategy is a extremely good point of departure for work towards the realisation of the university's high ambitions, and if we are to realise these, it is crucial that the strategy is implemented in practice throughout the entire organisation.
The in-depth discussions on the strategy by the board led to a few adjustments that will now to be included in the final strategy. The final strategy is planned for publication in week 51 on au.dk/strategi.
The new strategy for Aarhus University will come into force at the turn of the year and it will be valid until 2025.
Board members also reviewed the draft of a separate climate strategy for the university at the meeting. There was praise for the ambitious, yet operable strategy.
University consultation on the draft climate strategy will commence at the start of the new year, and it is expected that the strategy will be finalised in the spring of 2020.
Finally, the board also approved the university's 2020-2023 budget.
With the controversial reallocation contribution on degree programme revenues finally out of the picture, the financial future at AU looks brighter overall, and the university now has room to manoeuvre in continued strategic initiatives. However, finances will be under pressure over the next couple of years in parts of the university, due to previous years’ cuts and lower-than-expected student intake in some places. The university will face these challenges in a spirit of solidarity and unity.
At the meeting, the chair, Connie Hedegaard, thanked the four resigning members: Professor Susanne Bødker; Anne Louise Plaskett, team leader; Associate Professor Søren Pold; and Peter Tang Knudsen, student representative, for their contributions to the board.
The newly elected members attended as guests and they will officially join the board at the next meeting of the board in February. The new members are:
Last week, the seven university heads from the Circle U European university alliance were able to consolidate their collaboration by signing an agreement for the next three years. The alliance is currently working on an application for EU funding under the European Universities Initiative, focusing primarily on joint educational initiatives. In the long term, the plan is to work together on research and innovation.
In addition to Aarhus University, the alliance consists of Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin, King’s College London, Université catholique de Louvain, the University of Oslo, Université de Paris and the University of Belgrade, and the alliance represents around 320,000 students. Pro-rector Berit Eika took part in the official ceremony for AU, and she sees strong perspectives in the collaboration.
"It's a great pleasure now to have reached an important milestone for the alliance. We’re a strong group of universities that have a lot to learn from each other, even though we are similar in many aspects. Together, we’ll now be developing the teaching and degree programmes of the future, across linguistic and cultural boundaries. With the formal contract in place, I'm looking forward to engaging more students at Aarhus University in the alliance in the new year," says Berit Eika.
A new national initiative to develop mathematics teaching is to be realised in a collaboration between Danish universities and university colleges. With the establishment of a new centre - the National Centre for the Development of Mathematics Teaching (NCUM) - the aim is to develop mathematics teaching to benefit children and young people at all levels of the educational system.
The Ministry of Higher Education and Science and the Ministry of Children and Education have allocated DKK 25 million (EUR 3.3 million) to the initiative over a five-year period. The centre will be located physically at the Danish School of Education, Aarhus University, and it will be operated as a close collaboration between AU, the University of Copenhagen, Aalborg University, University College Copenhagen and VIA University College.
Professor Jacob Fog Bentzon, Department of Clinical Medicine, Professor Rune Slothuus, Department of Political Science, and Associate Professor Thomas Poulsen, Department of Chemistry. These three AU researchers have each just received one of the coveted ERC Consolidator Grants 2019.
The Lundbeck Foundation has announced that three neuroscientists, Poul Nissen, Leif Østergaard and Jelena Radulovic, are to receive professor grants. The Lundbeck Foundation has awarded a total of DKK 232 million (EUR 31 million) to six of the leading brain researchers in Denmark. The professor programme is the foundation's hitherto largest grant.
The Novo Nordisk Foundation has just granted a total of DKK 75 million (EUR 10 million) to projects that can strengthen the infrastructure in Danish research. At Aarhus University, Associate Professor Henrik Birkedal has received a total of DKK 16.3 million (EUR 2.2 million) for his Aarhus X-ray Imaging Alliance – AXIA project. The ambition of the project is to forge better understanding of bone structures during the course of diseases.
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