Newsletter from Arts - April 8th 2011
This week's Arts newsletter includes news from Dean Thunø about staff transfers from Emdrup to Aarhus, department names, applications for managerial positions, and the implementation groups.
Dear Arts staff members and students
I would like to thank you for the many department name proposals you have contributed. One hundred and fifty posts and fifty department name proposals testify to widespread engagement in the issue, and I am pleased that I have become dean of a faculty with such committed members, especially considering how much time and energy the reorganisation of the faculty is demanding of all of you.
I have read all of your proposals and arguments, and I expect the senior management group to reach a final decision next week. The official names will therefore be announced in the next newsletter.
Our administrative staff is under particularly heavy pressure for the time being; their place in the new organisation, both in terms of geography and managerial organisation, is being decided. University Director Jørgen Jørgensen has already written a letter to the technical and administrative staff thanking them for their continued hard work under these challenging circumstances. I would also like to thank our TAPs - and assure everyone that the senior management group places a high priority on finalising the structure of the new organisation.
It is only natural for change and uncertainty to provoke anxiety, and I hope that each of us at Arts will act in the awareness that all of our colleagues are doing their best to handle both their normal work duties and the changes taking place - and give each other the space we need to accomplish this.
About twenty academic staff members will be transferred from Aarhus to Emdrup, which has also been the cause of some anxiety. These staff members are researchers associated with the programmes which will become part of the faculty's new centre for university and upper secondary education along with two researchers from the Centre for Children's Literature, which is to be integrated into the Department of Aesthetics and Communication. These transfers have given rise to a debate in the press on which campus is the most suitable location for these research environments, as well as nervousness about possible plans for even more transfers of academic staff from Emdrup to Aarhus. There are no such plans. The transfers from Emdrup which were announced in the 9 March report will now take place; the intention is not to continue transferring additional academic staff from Emdrup to Aarhus.
About forty per cent of DPU's educational activities take place in Aarhus today, and we intend to expand DPU's presence in Aarhus over the coming years. This will be achieved through new appointments.
I participated in a very constructive two-day seminar along with fifty members of the university's academy councils at Sandbjerg this week. The work of establishing academy councils and the internal organisation of the departments will be decisive for our future activities, so I am looking forward to the first meetings of the Arts implementation groups next week.
We are also well under way in the process of interviewing applicants for the new vice-dean positions. Selected applicants are being tested at present, and applicants to department head positions are being evaluated by the advisory committee. We have received twenty-two applications for the three department head positions (with an equal number of applicants for each), and I hope that all of the new department heads will be able to take up their positions by 1 June this year.
Sincerely yours
Dean Mette Thunø
Arts
Read the news from Arts
- The members of the working groups on the implementation of the 9 March plan have been selected
- Letter from University Director to members of technical and administrative staff (in Danish)
Read all Arts news (in Danish) related to the Tomorrow's AU process at: http://medarbejdere.au.dk/fremtidensau/hovedomraader/ar/
Subscribe to the Arts newsletter