With the first half of the blog I would like to take the opportunity to thank all my colleagues at the ITM School for many years of collaborative efforts. The role of GA at the school is both rewarding and challenging for sure. It has been thrilling, frustrating, fun but always very meaningful. There is a unique tradition at the ITM School to strive for world class education in our program and I really have to thank all teachers and our educational administration for your efforts and everlasting ambition even when we struggled with external reviews, new programs, tight deadlines, loads of papers to sign and thousands of ambitious but impatient students. This year campus Vallahallvägen becomes 100 years old. In 2019 IVA becomes 100 years old. One new project is therefore to highlight the role of engineers in our society over 100 years but also how the engineering profession and education has changed. Since I have been GA at ITM for a substantial part of the 100 y period I have now volunteered for this project. All input is therefore welcome!
Since Anna Jerbrant is now taking over as GA I leave it to her to finish this blog post off. Take it away, Anna!
Thanks Pelle, but since you’re staying as vice GA we will be able to benefit from your extensive experience and knowledge a while longer. So who am I? I’m an associate professor at Indek and I’ve spent my days at campus KTH ever since the 90ties, when I became a student within the mechanical engineering program. For the major during the final one and a half year I choose Industrial economics and management, and by the time I graduated I realized that this was a subject area that I wanted to learn even more about. So I stayed at KTH as a Ph.D student and after that I’ve earned both a licentiate degree and a Ph.D degree within Industrial economics and management.
I have been teaching and developing courses here at KTH for a long time. This has resulted in the fact that I have taught on many different levels (basic, individual, advanced and executive level), as well as in various contexts (national and international, in academia and in industry), and in many different ways (giving supervision, coaching, guest lectures, seminars and being the course responsible teacher). Besides being a researcher and a teacher I have also been the program director (PA) for the I-programme (2010-2016) an exciting and sometimes grueling task. In 2014, KTH launched the pedagogical developers initiative, appointing part-time pedagogical developers among teachers from all schools of KTH. During the first year I had the pleasure of being one of five PDs at the ITM-school. Being part of the work to set up a community of practice with all involved teachers that was form during this period was enthralling.
So from march 1st I will have the opportunity to engage in all educational issues that are ongoing at the ITM-school, for the moment with some particular interest in the areas of quality assurance through course and program evaluations, changes in education due to digitalization (f.i. flipped classroom pedagogics), design of program integrated courses and pedagogical faculty development.
/ Per Lundqvist & Anna Jerbrant, GA