The Swedish Higher Education Authority (UKÄ) has been assigned by the Government to develop and implement a new model for quality evaluation of higher education. The model will be applied starting 2017 and contains four different types of assessments, for more information see the home page of UKÄ under Quality Assurance.

A pilot round of evaluating the doctoral education was performed 2016 and in January 2017 the “real” assessment starts with a number of subjects being evaluated, four of which we have at KTH and one of those at ITM: Economics (Sw. Nationalekonomi).

All subjects with a research education will eventually be assessed and we can foresee that a lot of time and effort will have to be spent on these evaluations.

The e-ISP system is up and running but we are still waiting for an update that will make it possible to get all the information from Ladok into the ISP. This update will be in place any day now. If you have questions regarding the web based ISP please email e-isp@kth.se.

/Malin Selleby, FA

For me, the last week was devoted to the thesis defense of one of my PhD students, David Dilner, and I tried to spend as little time as possible as FA. However, there are always issues that are impossible to postpone and this week I was contacted by the PhD Candidate Advisor, Ingrid Iliou, about a student engaged in an exchange programme. Who is responsible when there are two universities involved? One should be extremely careful when entering into a dual or double degree programme – it is very important to discuss all responsibilities in detail.

The e-ISP will be launched October 1^st. There was an information meeting in August and of course not everybody could attend – there will be another meeting later this fall. All students, except those that have set the date for their defense, will have to use the new e-ISP. If you have questions regarding the web based ISP please email e-isp@kth.se., or read more at the ITM Intranet.

/Malin Selleby, FA

Every month the PAs (persons responsible for the five doctoral programs at ITM) meet together with me and Gülten to discuss issues related to doctoral studies. We discuss new regulations, doctoral programs, courses, study plans, advance reviews, grants etc. Next meeting is scheduled to June 20 and to this meeting we have invited the responsible PhD students (PADs). I think that we should interact more with the PhD students in order to create an even better research study environment at ITM and this is a first step in that direction.

Some news and information regarding the administration of doctoral studies are

• e-ISP will (most likely – awaiting decision) be implemented starting September 1^st – so after the summer all* study plans should be submitted electronically
• a new form must be handed in to DO with a suggestion who should be appointed advance reviewer for doctoral and licentiate theses. The decision is thereafter taken by FA. This means that an additional two weeks are needed to handle this new process which mean that the suggestion should be handed in 11 weeks before the defense.

To end with something a little bit more existing and positive I would like to point out that all (?) doctoral courses at KTH can be found on the web! Not all course syllabuses for the ITM courses have been translated into English but we are working on that.

*students that have less than 1 year to their defense will probably not need to change systems.

/ Malin Selleby, FA

This is a report from the ongoing PhD conference at Skogshem & Wijk at Lidingö. The event started with lunch and the first presenter was the dean of the school, Jan Wikander, who gave a short introduction to the school from different perspectives. Three of the so called PAs for the doctoral programs participated the first day: Rahmat Khodabandeh (also vice FA, Energy and Environmental systems), Johann Packendorff (Industrial Economics & Management) and Daniel Tesfamariam Semere (Production Engineering).

The afternoon that followed was devoted to gender issues – Charlotte Holgersson started off by giving us some historical background of women at KTH, reminding us that the first female PhD graduated in the 1950’s and the first female professor was installed in the 1970’s, and continued by giving us examples from the SHE figures 2015. One of the participants suggested that it is just a matter of choice – women do not choose engineering. But that does not explain the leakage of women that can clearly be seen in these numbers from KTH: 32 % of the students are female, 26 % of the PhD students and only 15 % of the professors. The gender and diversity theme continued with an interactive theatre group. During the performance about the relationship between supervisor and candidate the audience got really involved and a few got up on stage.

In the evening there was a poster session with a lot of discussions and hopefully we will get many reports from the PhD students describing connections between different research fields at ITM. This is the way that the students may get credits from the conference.

On Thursday morning it was raining and the scheduled open-air-quiz was transformed to a web competition between teams with questions related to the PhD studies at ITM. The PA of the Machine Design program, Mats Magnusson, Rahmat, Gülten and I formed the team ‘Old guys’ and did pretty well. The PhD Chapter was responsible for this part of the program and took the opportunity to inform about their activities and how students can be involved in the work.

Finally, Sven Ove Hansson, professor in Philosophy at KTH, gave a talk about research and publication ethics and then invited the participants to discuss some ethically challenging cases.

When I talked with the two members of the theatre group about the gender distribution at the conference their feeling was that there were many male students whereas I was just about to say –yes we have many female students here today! – in my world (KTH) having about 30 % women is good.

/ Malin Selleby, FA

April 27-28 the ITM conference for PhD students will be held at Skogshem&Wijk on Lidingö. As last year, the main theme is Gender and Diversity. Associate Professor Charlotte Holgersson will talk about gender and diversity in organizations and give us the opportunity to think about and reflect upon our own working environment and discuss with our colleagues. There will also be a performance by the Pelle Axnäs group, interactive theater on the theme of the conference. Last year the performance triggered really interesting discussions among the participants and even made PhD students from the audience take place on stage. Does being a woman necessarily make you aware of gender issues? What can you be asked to do by your supervisor?

An additional theme is publication ethics which is of course always very important in the academic environment. Prof. Sven Ove Hansson has been invited to cover this topic. Is it ok to copy your own published text? Can you use material from undergraduate students work? Who should be a coauthor and who should be acknowledged? Does your supervisor necessarily enter as a coauthor on all your papers?

In addition to the above there will be information from the PhD Chapter and from the ITM management, a poster session and a nice dinner!

If this sounds interesting and you’re a PhD student at ITM – please sign up for the conference which is free of charge for you. If you’re a supervisor – tell your PhD student about this opportunity!

More information & registration

Malin Selleby, FA