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Coming back from vacation in august is always a challenge! Prioritisation between different things is difficult. There is simply not enough time available! It is also clear, based on the urgency of matters, that we are a very international university. We have a lot of our Swedish students coming home after studies abroad with new course portfolios to handle. Some of them look quite different from the agreed upon ones a year or more ago. The most common reason for that is the fact that many other universities seems to be able to stop their courses from being run with very short notice. Our students simply have to find something else of interest. We also have a lot of foreign students coming in for master program studies at ITM (at least 300) but also to a lesser extent for dual degree or so called dual master. Many of us are also quite confused with some of these concepts. On top of that we have paying and non-paying students from Sweden and EU.
A few years ago, if you recall, KTH had a general problem with “The Balance”. We had too many incoming students and too few outgoing and this led to an imbalance. Several activates were initiated to mitigate this. And we have been very successful! We have now since 4-years an international “track” in the M-program, we have rearranged courses and structures in most programs to simplify for our own students to “go out”. We have also sponsored our own MFS (Minor Field Studies) for KEX and MEX students (even if this actually not helps the balance since they are registered at KTH). We have also initiated collaboration with Universities through new master programs mostly in the KIC Inno Energy. Also international collaborative PhD program are running at Energy Technology and Indek.
Do we have a problem, one might ask? On one hand we are doing relatively well at KTH but we also sense a lack of strategic direction at school level. In order to set things straight, on Tuesday this last week the ITM board gathered for a 4 hour creative meeting in Sing-Sing to discuss the strategy for the future. Where are we going from here? Should we go for even more international collaborations through master programs, should we focus on recruiting more paying students or should we further intensify our efforts to send out our own students, or all of it, at the same time?
A few things were clear: International collaboration requires resources. Several good proposals were made and among these are to better utilize already existing research collaborations. Also to investigate the possibilities to use existing networks such as Cluster in Europe. The KTH prioritized regions were also discussed. Another issue is underutilization of funding opportunities from EU Erasmus + for instance.
Stay tuned for some new working groups during the fall!
/ Per Lundqvist, GA
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… with some good news. Already in my last blog post we celebrated a prestigious research contract with SFF in the area of material science. Now it is time to celebrate the next: our VINNEX centre Hero-m, also in the area of material science, has succeeded in securing an additional five years of substantial funding in very tough competition. Hero-m is successfully led by professor Annika Borgenstam. It was also very timely that our developments in Södertälje have been successfully strengthened by the fact that we are now a partner in the VINNEX centre HELIX hosted by Linköping University. HELIX and Hero-m are two of the total of five VINNEX centres that were granted five years continuation. Finally, we should highlight that the CECIS centre at INDEK is a partner in a new Mistra funded research program on how financial markets and actors can contribute to sustainable societal development. The program – Mistra Financial Systems – is led by Handelshögskolan and operated in collaboration with national as well as international partners. Professor Hans Lööf is responsible from the ITM-side.
There are probably several other initiatives that are worth celebrating, so please give me a hint…
Some departments are expanding. Right now the most urgent need is to find extra space for the departments of Energy Technology and Production Engineering. The solution to this is that our education administration office (utbildningskansliet) will move from Brinellvägen 68 to Lindstedtsvägen 3, level 6. The move will take place during the summer, so from August 1st the office is fully functional at the new location. But don’t worry, Expnord will remain at its current location and continue its development.
Another change about to happen within our educational system is that the organisation for how we manage and operate our education programs will be reshaped. The current way of operating has been more or less the same for many years despite the fact the education program structure has changed with BSc degrees, master programs and an extensive internationalization and thereby has become a lot more complex. The ambition with the new structure is to achieve a more transparent way operation, a better integration and communication between the program dimension and line organization, and more clear delegations and responsibilities for the different academic and administrative roles within education.
In the last Research Assessment Exercise (RAE2012) the ITM School achieved reasonably good results. A point that was made by one of the review panels was that we could gain a lot by better integration over department borders. In particular this was pointed out between the departments of Production Engineering and Machine Design. This, together with urgent needs on the one hand from department expansions, and on the other hand from needs of our education programs, have triggered a recently started project to modernize our premises at Valhallavägen. Sofia Ritzén coordinates this but more concretely the project is operated by KTH MBA and White Arkitekter.
Last, but certainly not least, have very nice summer vacation!
Jan Wikander, dean, the last blogger of the spring semester, but stay tuned, we will be back!
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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 1st – 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
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Safety inspections at ITM
As we have talked about earlier in this blog, the working environment for the personnel and the student’s is an important part of ITM’s work. As part of our systematic work focusing on the working environment, we have completed the safety inspections at each department under the lead of each department head and with the support of Sofia Granberg at Dean’s Office. From the department, the local health and safety representative as well as people responsible for chemicals, fire protections and laboratories participated. In addition, Ulf Götbrant participated, he is an engineer from the company Avonova, who are experts in issues related to the working environment especially in laboratories. After each inspection a report is written which states weak parts that need to be corrected in order to improve the environment as which environmental law in Sweden that requires that this improvement needs to be done. At the end of the day, the department head and the health and safety representative signs this document. Thereafter, it is the department heads responsibility to follow up these weak points to make sure that they are corrected during this year. If you wish to obtain more details from this document you can contact your department head or health and safety representative.
Environment al goals
We have also suggested some new environmental goals for the coming years within the areas of organization and leadership, research travel, chemicals, etc. These are described in detail at the intranet.
Faculty
I have some news regarding the faculty. Torkel Strömstedt has been appointed as a Guest Professor in Industrial Economy with the Focus on Economy Control. He will be working at the Department of Industrial Economy and Management. Also, Jennie Björk has obtained the title Docent in Product Innovations. She is working at the Department of Machine Design.
Finally, I must say that I was quite shocked this weekend when I went to a family reunion outside Ludvika. It was very cold and it had snowed almost 10 cm! during the night. Snow in May! I long for the summer!, as I guess most of you do?
Pär Jönsson, Vice Dean
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The school has closed its books at SEK -4.2m for the period January-April 2016. The budget for the whole year is SEK +3.6m. The discrepancy between budget and the result is primarily due to salary costs and external revenue.
Revenue (SEK, millions)
| Gru |
81,536 |
| FoFu |
43,218 |
| Grants, external |
51,500 |
| Commissions, external |
3,122 |
| Other revenue |
2,472 |
| Financial |
10 |
Costs (SEK, millions)
| Salaries |
105,968 |
| Premises |
26,226 |
| Travel expenses |
4,761 |
| Equipment excl. depreciation |
2,869 |
| Consultancy services |
5,675 |
| Operations and other |
6,272 |
| TB |
22,593 |
| Especially TB GRU KTH |
7,627 |
| Depreciation |
4,129 |
| Financial |
11 |
Yours sincerely,
Christina, Head of Administration
