ITM Management blogs

A milestone to be reached this week!

Annika Lilja

, 2016-02-22

I was about to dedicate this blog piece to the fact that the team behind the development of our campus in Södertälje will reach a major milestone this week, but I did not need to because our president has already highlighted it! See the president’s letter. A few names are mentioned in the weekly president’s letter but all who have been somehow involved in the developments – not the least the staff members of TMT – should feel that they are part of the timely and professional but sometimes rather challenging process of reaching the first major milestone. There are more milestones to come, so let us continue the development in the same constructive and professional manner, and let us have fun while doing it!

Next year, the KTH main campus will celebrate its 100 year anniversary. As part of the celebrations KTH is now looking for major or exciting or unusual events or happenings that will take place during 2017, and hence candidates for being part of the celebrations. If you know about such things that are worth celebrating please inform Annika Lilja. Besides the KTH celebrations, ITM will in 2017 also celebrate the birth and inauguration of the new campus in Södertälje.

The annual ITM leadership conference takes place March 17-18. This year the conference gathers unit leaders, directors of studies, doctoral program directors, centre/SFO managers, impact leader, heads of department, administrative function managers, and school management. Altogether we will be around 50 people concentrating on issues of strategic importance for developing our academic environment, for improving quality, and for discussing longer term strategies towards the societal impact that we would like to see. One core topic this year will be ITM core values, gender equality, diversity and equal treatment.

Not all KTH schools produce an annual activity report, but ITM does. From last year we also decided to use the annual report more actively as an instrument for our external communications. Most importantly we distribute it to PhD and faculty alumni, but also to strategic partners and funding bodies. Please inform ITM Communication with name and address to external people that you think are of strategic importance to your academic activities.

Last but not least, if you are an ITM PhD student, don’t forget to register for ITM PhD candidate conference 2016.

Jan Wikander, Dean

PhD student conference coming up

Annika Lilja

, 2016-02-12

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

ITM is working to secure your working environment and to provide wellness activities to promote your health!

Annika Lilja

, 2016-02-05

The working environment for the personnel and the student is an important part of ITM’s work. At Dean’s office we have weekly meetings between me, Annika Lilja and Sofia Granberg and sometimes even other persons to discuss the progress regarding our systematic work focusing on the different part of the environment. During the last two years we have tried to organize the work in different groups. This has led to the decision that we have hired the following persons part time at Deans* office to be responsible for the following tasks:

Each of these three persons is in turn responsible for a group consisting of people from each of ITM’s departments. 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. Thus, we have created groups of specialists that can learn from each other as well as discuss issues related to their focus areas.

As an important part of the Deans’ office systematic work on issues related to the working environment, we also meet Valter, Anders and Peter four times a year to inform each other regarding what each group is working on. At these meetings, Annika and Sofia inform and discuss activities that take place in their KTH network on environmental issues. In addition, Anna Thöresson Berg participates as the responsible for the psycho-social work within ITM. The last important member of this group is Staffan Qvarnström, who is ITM’s main Health and safety representant. He also has his own network of people from each department.

I should also mention that within ITM’s group we make a budget for the coming year regarding the needs of educations, support etc. Thereafter, this budget is later on presented for the ITM board that makes the final decision on the amount. So far the board has been very positive towards our activities so we feel that we have a strong support from the leadership. You can find more information on our at ITM’s intranet.

I also want to inform you about an important part of our systematic environmental work that will take place soon. It is time for our annual safety inspections at each department. These will take place at the following times:

March 7, Materials Science and Engineering
March 9, Industrial Economics and Management and Deans Office
March 11, Industrial Production
March 14, Applied Mechanical Engineering
March 21, Machine Design
March 29, Energy Technology

As part of the budget each year we also include specially targeted wellness activities directed to promote your health (friskvård). Here, we send out a question to you (both our personnel and scholarship students) to ask which activities you prefer. Thereafter, we select the activities that most people have voted for. Please visit ITM’s intranet to see what activities that are offered by us.

Personally, I try to join the floorball group once or twice a week because I think it is a whole lot of fun. Maybe I will see you at that activity or at least that I see you in the KTH hall in the future?

Pär Jönsson, Vice Dean

Greetings for the new year

Annika Lilja

, 2016-01-26

Do you remember what it felt like to open a brand new paper calendar? Every sheet a clean page, completely blank, no doodles, no “to do” lists. Gradually you filled it up by hand.

This is still how I feel today when I return to work after the Christmas break, but there are no blank pages – everything has been transferred electronically into a diary.

Financial result for the year
The school had a budget of SEK 5.7 million and posted a surplus of SEK 5.6 million. The result is distributed by division: SEK -7.3 million for research and SEK +12.9 million for education. Research is still generating a loss despite a marked increase in the number of external projects in 2015. This is largely due to the school’s low level of basic government funding which is not matched to the number of external projects.

The education side generates a relatively large surplus. This is partly due to the performance-based funding that was awarded to ITM for the master’s programme in engineering. A number of positions are being recruited, means those costs have yet to arise.

The doctoral completion rate increased by 10 points from 2014 to 2015, which will generate an increase in allocation for 2017. At the end of 2015 there were 516 full-time equivalents employed at the school.

The school continued to have a regulatory capital deficit of SEK -12.1 million.

Allocation for 2016
The school’s operational objectives for 2016 (president’s contract) have been uploaded onto the web. They outline the school’s objectives from a KTH perspective. The document specifies KTH’s expectations and objectives for the school. The year’s allocation of funding is also specified in this document. Work on allocating the revenues to the school’s departments is currently in progress.

Administration
The administration office at the school held a shared workshop just before Christmas. There were two intensive days during which all participants showed great commitment. The work environment and group projects were in focus and we discussed how an ideal administration could be structured/function within a three-year period. The key words for the day were psychosocial work environment, service-mindedness, efficiency, sustainability, leadership and organisation.

The on-going workshop-based work will continue throughout the year and will emanate in a new administrative strategic plan for 2017-2020.

Be well

Christina, Head of Administration

What will the future structure of education at KTH look like?

Annika Lilja

, 2016-01-19

What will the future structure of education at KTH look like? Will we keep the “Civilingenjörsexamen” forever? Do we need as many programs as today? Can we afford the education we give today even in the future? If not, is the problem that many of our courses are run with too few students? According to recent statistics 579 out of 1739 courses at KTH are run with less than 16 students? Do we recognize this at ITM? If not, why? Are there any problems at all, really?

These are some of the questions and issues that were discussed today when GA (myself) and vice-GA Catharina Erlich met with KTH´s special investigator Anders Axelsson and Björn Marklund together with representatives from Science, ABE and ECE schools. Axelsson, the former president of LTH, will present the results from his investigation, and associated recommendations, during the spring. One particularly interesting point of discussion was the motivation for our programs. We tried to convey the message that our programs at ITM are needed and that they all fulfil their purpose for both students and industry.

A lot of discussions will obviously follow and it will be interesting to see the final conclusions. It is a true challenge for anyone to find the “ideal concept” for KTH and the different schools. One thing is clear, gone are the days when it was enough to attract the students to KTH in the first place with a fancy program name. We also need to “keep” them and transform them into successful world class students that manage to get their degree on time and an interesting job afterwards. It is my firm belief that the difference in profile and character we have developed and refined for our programs at ITM still is a good strategy for this to happen. Another key success factor for the future is to work hard to maintain the strong and positive involvement from our academic staff in different positions as “program managers”, teachers and study counselors working together and continuing being proud of what we do in the educational field.

Another interesting topic discussed today was the employability of our students and the recent prognosis that there will be a lack of högskoleingenjörsstudenter (“Bachelor of Engineering”) in Stockholm in the near future. It seems to me that we have a lot of god things for this in the pipeline at the ITM School and maybe there is time to mention some of the activities planned for 2016 in the next blog post this week.

Per Lundqvist, GA

Studies

Research

Collaboration

About KTH

Library

A milestone to be reached this week!

PhD student conference coming up

ITM is working to secure your working environment and to provide wellness activities to promote your health!

Greetings for the new year

What will the future structure of education at KTH look like?