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One of the highlights at the end of every semester is the graduation (diploma) ceremony in the City Hall. This fall was no different for our school. We were sharing the evening (KTH need two days for this) with four other schools: ECE, CHE, BIO and ICT.
The ceremony is really fantastic with KTH symphony orchestra and the choir. For this particular event dressed up as a proper “Lucia Tåg” of course. Christmas music and classics and the evening highlight was, as usual, when well-known opera singer and KTH Alumni Gunnar Lundberg sang O Holy Night (O Helga Natt in Swedish) with the choir and orchestra. It is informally known as Adams Christmas song after the composer Adolphe Adam. Original title is Cantique de Noël and it is composed way back in 1843 for those of you that like numbers. The song is almost as old as KTH apparently.
Speaking of numbers and impact: This evening made clear that ITM is THE major producer of engineers at KTH. Degrees were awarded to Civ Ing (5 yr), Hing (3 yr) and masters (2yr) as usual. Here are some interesting statistics from last night:
BIO – 23 students. CHE – 25 students. ECE – 13 students. ICT – 22 students. ITM – 211 students!
All 211 names read by undersigned – puh!
The largest group this time was Industrial economics and management program followed by Mechanical engineering and Design and product realization. For the first time the Energy and environmental engineering presented a noticeable impact with 16 students!
Extra fun for our School was that the KTH pedagogical prize was awarded to Mikael Ersson from Dept. of Material Science and Engineering. Mikael shared the price with Emma Strömberg from the CHE-school. Congratulations to both winners!
A really fantastic evening ending with champagne and mingle in the “golden hall”.
/Per Lundqvist, GA
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The last few weeks have been really intense with teaching, a workshop with lots of guests and much celebration. First there was the ceremony in the Concert Hall where 185 of the 308 doctors who graduated from KTH since the last time were promoted. It was striking how in the beginning it seemed like everyone at KTH were women: Vice Chairman (Helene Biström), the new president (Sigbritt Karlsson), Dean of the Faculty (Katja Tollmar Grillner), promoter (Margareta Norell Bergendahl), recipient of Janne Carlsson Scholarship for academic leadership (Cecilia Christersson), recipient of the KTH Grand prize (Helene Ehrensvärd) and the first two Deans (Muriel Bezer Hugosson and Amelie Eriksson Karlström). But then of course some schools had few or no female doctors and smashed the illusion. Of course I don’t mean that there should be only women at KTH only that it is desirable to have a mixture. It was great to see with what pride, yet timidness, all the new doctors received proof of what they had achieved. The atmosphere at the dinner in the City Hall was high, and it’s nice that supervisors get to enjoy it together with their former doctoral students.
Last Friday it was time to celebrate again when one of our doctoral students in a very commendable way defended her dissertation. It is fantastic to see how much joy radiates from a newly appointed doctor and to see their maturity and security. But of course it is also a little sad when one of the “kids” leave the nest.
Also the FA-business has taken its fair share of time – e-mails from both students and supervisors where there is a problem of some kind. Sometimes it is easy to help but sometimes, when the academic collides with the harsh economic reality, it is more difficult.
And of course I have to say something about the e-ISP. The system works well (even if it sometimes feels as if the ISPs goes in circles) and I think the time from when a graduate student presses the button to when the FA approves will be shortened considerably!
If you have questions regarding the web based ISP please email e-isp@kth.se.
/ Malin Selleby, FA
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A systematic work focusing on the working environment for the personnel and the student’s is an important ITM task. As we have explained in earlier blogs ITM has appointed the following experts to lead the work in their respective area of expertise:
Each of these three persons is in turn responsible for a group consisting of experts from each of ITM’s department. They meet four times a year to discuss different issues such as needs for education of personnel, smart solutions that was found by one department and that can be transferred to other departments, etc.
In addition to the above mentioned three experts, Emelie Griplund, Katarina Tersmeden and Anton Lagerbäck from Deans Office as well as Staffan Qvarnström (ITM’s main Health and safety representant) meet four times per year to discuss the overall environmental work at ITM. During our last meeting for the year we summarized the activities during 2016 in a systematic environmental plan, which will be available on the internal web soon. In addition, we made a budget for the planned activities for 2017. This budget will be presented to the ITM board for their approval. The suggested activities include:
- Courses identified by Valter, Anders and Peter to make sure that the personnel at each department obtain the suitable training.
- Courses offered to all personnel at ITM including hints on how to handle stress as well as how to use a hearth starter may be used.
- Sport activities, which were selected based on the input from those of you that had replied to the survey that was sent out (95 people): including massage, badminton, floor hockey, yoga, swimming and core.
I have corrected the exams from period 1 in the two classes I taught. Overall, the students performed very well which is a pleasure for a teacher to experience. Now, in period 2 I am involved in a class where students in the fifth year work on solving industrial problems in collaboration with industry. It is one of the most exciting courses I am involved in and I am looking forward to see their innovative solutions at the end of the semester.
As most of you I feel that December and the holiday is approaching in a rapid speed. It is also a time of the year that has its special feeling, since many people decorate their homes and streets with different lamps to counteract the darkness that this time of the year brings. Is not the LED lamp a brilliant technological innovation!?
Pär Jönsson, Vice Dean
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The dean has taken the decision that the school must establish a service centre at ITM. The work for this change has now started. The school will have three service desks: Södertälje, Sing Sing and the IM headquarters. The desks must be manned during office hours, Monday – Friday. The organisation must be in operation from April 1, 2017. Annika Lilja at DO will be the project manager until the service centre is in operation.
A first step in this work has been to talk to all administrators who, in one way or the other, will be affected by this change. Step two is that we, together within the administration, will hold a workshop on November 23-24 to get the opportunity to discuss the change but to also have a chance to influence the process as work will be done on project basis until April 1.
We will, as the project progresses, actively inform all the employees at the ITM school. A control group and a reference group are appointed. The reference group includes employees from the academic line and the school’s main safety representative.
In parallel with the manned service desks, there will be a digital input terminal for issues related to public service. Hopefully, that means a switch to digitalization for base-service issues;
- Easier for the customer
- More efficient
- A driving force on the matter
- Enhanced service level
- Availability
- Extended opening hours
- Cost-effective in the long run
- Broader and deeper skills
- Shared working
We must together find the key for adapting to the demands of service. One challenge is to find a structure for the proper flow of information so that we can constantly adjust the level of service according to the demand.
/ Christina Carlsson, Head of Administration
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Yesterday there was an award ceremony to thank our president Peter Gudmundson for his 9 years at the rudder of KTH. Labans Hage – the small area between Brinellvägen 8 and 10 – was renamed in Peter’s honour to Peters Hage, and a nice piece of art was installed reflecting Peter’s background as an elite ice-hockey player.
The first KTH Management group meeting with our new president Sigbritt Karlsson takes place on Monday afternoon. She has already announced that her ambition is to have more of strategic discussions at those meeting, and little less of just unilateral information flow. Information can be passed on more efficiently by other means, she says. The topic of discussion at this first meeting will be the “conditions and situation for young researchers”. And the corresponding background material is:
Early-career researchers need fewer burdens and more support and
Young scientists under pressure: what the data show
Another topic that our new president most likely will bring to the table is a new development plan for KTH from 2018 and onwards. For ITM, this topic will be one of the main points of discussion at the annual ITM leader’s conference which takes place January 11-12. The KTH and School development plans 2013-2016 were extended with one year due to the change of presidents. For ITM we made only minor changes to the previous plan except for a new section entitled Specific initiatives which covers a number of new strategic School initiatives which have resulted from, and been developed under, the ITM Academic Development Plan 2013‐2016. You find this plan under our intranet pages.
On Wednesday this week we had the last formal discussion with the former (by Monday) president, and this ended up in a signed ITM Activity contract (Verksamhetsuppdrag) for 2017. After some rather tough negotiations we managed to almost reach the targeted level for new initiatives (faculty positions) while preserving the funding for some “extraordinary initiatives” which we have negotiated during the year. Examples of those are cash funding for PMH and extra faculty funding during the build-up period at our Södertälje campus.
As we all have noticed, the winter is here and I hope for a cross country première during the weekend! Physical exercise in any form is good for us, so please check out the ITM Wellness activities and the ITM Calendar on our intranet.
/ Jan Wikander
Dean of School
