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Update on situation at ITM

Pär Jönsson

 , 2020-03-26

Dear colleagues,
First, I wish to thank all of you for your fine work, even though most of you have to carry out your tasks from home. It seems like we all have learned a new way of working. It seems so natural to have the meetings using Zoom today, so that many times I wonder why we did not use it more often.

Still, I wish to stress the importance of keeping yourself updated on the corona situation by reading www.kth.se/corona. As I mentioned before, the President has a crisis group that meet every day. Based on these meetings the website is being updated every day.

I also wish to share some information on what is going on:

  • The ITM management group meet officially every Tuesday between 15.00 – 17.00 in order to inform each other about the current situation and to make things work as smooth as possible.
  • The Learning department is working extra hard to be a support to all teachers needing to transform to the new situation. Currently there is also a focus on how to assist teachers in giving digital examinations in the upcoming Easter exam period. A very good news and example of how we collaborate during these times is that 15 other people from KTH have joined their efforts to help the Learning department to carry out these important tasks to assist KTH’s teachers.
  • The administration is working as usual, but we are using digital signatures to a greater extent, to speed up each case. I think all of you can see from your e-mails that the administration response to your requests fast.
  • The President has made a decision to move the RAE visit week to 2021 (week 34). In total 82 international and national experts are involved in this evaluation and it is too hard to carry out this big event as was planned to take place in August 2020. It should be noted that an internal review will take place during 2020, based on the information that already has been gathered by all researchers.

Finally, I again wish to thank all of you for trying to do your best working from your homes. This is a new situation for all of us and we need to find new ways to fulfil our duties at KTH.  Also, do not forget to get some fresh air during your breaks. The spring is slowly showing up and it is quite refreshing to get some sun and a nice walk in the nearby neighborhood.

/Pär Jönsson, Head of the ITM School

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Head of School, Pär Jönsson

Welcome back to a new decade!

Pär Jönsson

 , 2020-01-13

Dear colleagues, I hope that all of you had a relaxing and fun time with family and friends during the holidays!

All leaders at ITM will gather at the conference center Såstaholm during January 16 to 17 for our annual leadership conference. This year the first day will focus on gender aspects under the lead of our JMLA Professor Annika Borgenstam. This is a follow-up of the four-day education for our unit leaders that took place during 2019. However, we will now begin making specific plans on how to continue the work on gender and equal treatment issues in respective department. The second day of the conference is organized by our HR manager Anna Blendow. Here, specific examples of situations leaders can bump into will be presented, and we’ll work together on how to strengthen the leadership of the ITM leaders.

I also wish to mention that I met with some of the Health and Safety representatives at ITM on January 9. It was very interesting to discuss both what they have been working with as well as how we can improve the collaboration between them and the management at the departments and at ITM. Currently, ITM lacks representatives from the Departments of Materials Science and Engineering and the Department of Industrial Production. However, I know that the unions at KTH are working on finding representatives here. A person having this appointment will learn a lot from being involved in systematic environmental work, reorganizations, reconstructions, etc. In fact, such an appointment is very good for a person’s curriculum for example if the person has the intention to apply for leadership positions in the future. We need engaged personnel that contributes to collaborations at ITM.

This spring, the research evaluation RAE2020 will be in focus and involve most researchers at ITM. President Sigbritt Karlsson wishes that the departments focus on their future development plans and get a specific feedback on these plans from international and national experts, mostly from academia, but also from industry. Those of us that have participated in RAE2008 and RAE2012 know that it is a lot of work, but also very fun!

Illustration mirror with the text meet the person responsible for quality at ITM/KTHNow that we all are back to work we enter a new exciting time – we are entering a new decade. We do not exactly now what will happen but only that all of us will influence what happens here at ITM. The quality of ITM’s work dependent on the engagement from each and every one of us.

/Pär Jönsson, Head of the ITM School

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Pär Jönsson

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Head of School, Pär Jönsson

Salaries, leadership and working environment

Pär Jönsson

 , 2019-11-20

Dear colleagues,

The fall semester has gone fast and we are already at the end of November, soon reaching the New Year! During the fall, the ITM management has worked on many issues as you probably have seen in different blogs and newsletters.

As all of you know, we have worked with salary negotiations during the fall. From the managements side we have identified groups or departments where large imbalances exist and tried to take measures to decrease these differences. Here, it is very important that we compare individual salaries with the salaries on a KTH level. We believe that this approach will lead to more equal salaries for all individuals and functions based on the performance in connection to the task of the function and independently of in which unit they are active. Overall, the process has been good. Me and Anna Blendow had the last negotiations with KTH and the unions on Monday and we resolved all remaining questions with respect to the salary suggestions. Thus, all of you could expect to receive your new salary in December.

Currently we are finishing the leadership course with focus on gender aspects under the lead of our JMLA Professor Annika Borgenstam. This four–day education of all unit leaders including home work with their own organizations will by wrapped up at a meeting at the end of November at HPU in Södertälje. Thereafter, we will gather all unit leaders at our annual leadership conference, which will take place on January 16 and 17, 2020. Here we will make plans on how to continue the work on gender and equal treatment issues in our organization.

ITM has continued to work in a systematic manner with work environment and safety issues in our so-called Quality (Q) group. Here, we discuss issues such as chemicals, fire protection, inflammable goods, responsible for the laboratories, etc. As you may know, we meet four times per year. The purpose is to systematically improve our work in all these areas based on best practice. During the last meeting we discussed the necessary investments in courses to educate the personnel in fulfilling their tasks at the departments as well as investments in equipment that are necessary to improve the safety. ITM management team has a special budget to make sure that this is done in a systematic manner, which will benefit us all.

I wish to especially point out the importance of having active Health and Safety representatives, which work together with the ITM management in many issues such as the systematic environmental work, reorganizations, reconstructions, etc. Currently, the ITM school lack representatives in several departments as well as a main representative for ITM. We have had discussions with both union representatives as well as experts from KTH on how to stimulate more individuals to take these responsibilities. We will continue to discuss with the unions until we have some active and competent Health and Safety representatives in place.

/Pär Jönsson, Acting Head of School

 

 

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Acting Head of School, Pär Jönsson

New leadership at ITM and welcome back

Pär Jönsson

 , 2019-08-29

Dear colleagues,
I wish to welcome you back from your vacations. I hope that all of you now have returned with an extra boost of energy so that you are ready to continue your work tasks in a successful manner!

As you all know by now, the President has initiated a process to select a new Head and Deputy Head of the ITM School. A committee consisting of participants from both KTH and ITM will be formed. The goal is to select the new leadership during the autumn so that they can start their positions in January 2020.

The President has appointed me as a Acting Head of School and Martin Törngren as the Deputy Head during the period of July 1 to December 31. Martin’s focus will be to lead an integrated research initiative that the ITM Management group has decided on earlier this year. I will let Martin explain more about this in his own blog.

My job will be to carry out the Head’s tasks in a similar way as was done by the previous one. This means, for example, that every second Tuesday I will meet the Head of Administration Christina Carlsson, the Director of First and Second Cycle Education (GA) Anna Jerbrant, the Director of Third Cycle Education (FA) Malin Selleby, and the Responsible for the research initiative Martin Törngren. The purpose with these meetings is mainly to prepare relevant questions that we will discuss in the ITM Management group, which also are held every second Tuesday. The Management group also consists of the Department Heads, the responsible for the faculty and a student representative.

I also wish to inform you about a couple of activities that will take place during the fall:

  • The salary negotiations between managers and employees will take place in September.
  • The quality system for the education at KTH will be evaluated. We will inform you more in detail later. Now we now that the dates for evaluations will be October 1 and November 25 to 28.
  • The preparations for the assessment of the research (RAE2020) will start. This event will take place late August 2020.

Pär Jönsson and his son in the Jededia Smith’s Redwood State Park Finally, I wish to share some of my summer activities. The most amazing thing I did during the vacation was the visit to Jededia Smith’s Redwood State Park, where a Star Wars movie was filmed. It is a fantastic feeling to take a walk in such a forest full of very tall trees that are more than 2000 years old. I strongly recommend a visit to a Redwood park if you get a chance!

/Pär Jönsson, Acting Head of School

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Head of School, Pär Jönsson

Testing new ways of examining knowledge in the master program

Pär Jönsson

 , 2019-05-29
A picture taken just after that the students’ visit at SMT’s plant in Sandviken.

A new examination idea

Many teachers at the ITM School often think of new ideas on how to examine the required knowledge in a course, and I am one of them. I wish to share some recent experiences. Together with my colleague Assistant Professor Björn Glaser we teach in the course Advanced Process Science. The purpose of the course is to teach students about reactor design and process control in industrial metallurgical processes. Based on their previous obtained knowledge (for example thermodynamics and kinetics), we teach them on how to apply this knowledge on current industrial processes.

During the course evaluations the last 5-8 years, the students have suggested to examine the course goals in other ways than through a traditional written exam. Based on this we have tested open 24 hours exams where students have been given the task eight o’clock in the morning and then turned in their answers 24 hours later. The responses from the students have been very positive!

In close collaboration with Sandvik

Together with the company Sandvik Materials Technology (SMT), who sponsors parts of the travels in the course, we tested a new idea this year. Previous years we have visited SMT at the end of the course. The company has presented their work on selected processes and the students have had a tour to the steel and working mills.

This year we tried out a different approach. Together with Olle Sundqvist and Fia Vikman from SMT we defined five topics for the students to work on to acquire the knowledge needed to fulfill the course goals. Olle visited KTH to give introductory lectures in January. Thereafter, the groups were formed, and one supervisor from SMT together with one from KTH were designated to each group. As next step, each group visited SMT in Sandviken to study their process part and to discuss details of the project with the supervisor.

Examination in relation to the industry

Back at KTH the students had to answer three large questions related to process control and reactor design, based on course material given in the lectures and information from the literature. The fourth question was a more open question where the students should suggest innovative solutions to improve the specific process task given by SMT.

After almost two periods of work, the student findings were presented in a report as well as at a seminar in Sandviken in May. Here, the whole project was presented for a larger audience and the performance was judged by the teachers. In a way this corresponded to our previous 24 hours exam level. In addition, the innovative solutions were discussed in detail separately in small groups including the specific supervisors. After a full day’s work in Sandviken, SMT invited the students and teachers to a fantastic three-course dinner at their restaurant.

Improved motivation and innovative solutions

Overall, our experience is that the motivation of the students was much higher and the innovative solutions were detailed and more realistic, when we used this approach instead of a traditional way of examining their knowledge. In their work they clearly showed that they used their previously obtained knowledge in coming up with innovative solution.

In addition, they also discovered that the current metallurgical tools to determine thermodynamics and kinetics cannot always be used for real industrial applications, since for example databases and knowledge are missing. One important learning was that our theoretical knowledge is not always enough to solve all industrial problems. Thus, as future engineers the students need to work hand-in-hand with skilled personnel in industry that has the hands-on knowledge to solve challenging industrial tasks!

/Pär Jönsson, Vice Head of the ITM School

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Pär Jönsson, Vice Head of School