As we conclude our series on the school’s reform agenda, Read more in KTH’s Business Plan (in Swedish), I want to focus on two critical areas: improving our work and study environments, and promoting sustainable faculty renewal. We have already made significant progress in recruiting top-tier faculty members, thanks to our increasingly high reputation. Now is the time to work towards even more sustainable and stable working conditions and work environment, while continuing our commitment to diversity and gender balance.

Our next steps involve making better use of our available resources, which might include optimizing our faculty size and introducing renewed faculty support mechanisms. This process will be carefully analyzed and planned throughout the fall of 2024 and spring of 2025. We will work closely with the departments and the faculty board to ensure that every decision is informed, collaborative, and in the best interest of our school community.

So, what is our strategy? At its core, our strategy is about providing a stable and reassuring workload and work conditions for our faculty. We believe that by doing so, we enable our faculty to plan their long-term research and teaching development effectively. This stability is essential for fostering an environment where academic excellence can thrive.

Currently, a considerable number of our faculty members hold prestigious grants, such as Wallenberg Fellowships, Scholars and ERC grants, which allow them the freedom to pursue ambitious research projects and develop their academic careers. While this is a fantastic achievement, I believe that stable and supportive work conditions should be the norm for all faculty members, not just those with additional grant funding. Every faculty member recruited through our highly competitive international process expects to work in an environment that supports their long-term goals and aspirations. Having access to prestigious grants should provide additional funding for expanding one’s research group and cover research initiatives.

As we move forward, each department will work on a strategic recruiting plan during the fall to better plan and prioritize resources for the coming years. This strategic approach will enable us to align our recruitment efforts with our long-term goals and ensure that we are utilizing our resources effectively.

Additionally, the school is preparing a comprehensive document that will detail the implementation of our action plan for 2024. This document will also illustrate the use of financial resources throughout the year. We aim to provide full transparency and clarity on how we are investing in our faculty, students, and infrastructure to support our strategic goals. This plan will be made available in August.

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Improved Work Environment and Study Environment – Sustainable Faculty Renewal

The school’s reform agenda for faculty renewal will focus on streamlining employment procedures and recruitment processes to ensure a smoother and more transparent process, while promoting sustainable faculty development through investments in long-term strategies and resources for staff development and career support.

From the spring semester of 2024, each department will have a vice dean responsible for faculty renewal. A new Faculty Renewal Officer (FRO) will begin on July 1, 2024, and will work closely with the four vice deans to develop and implement strategies to improve the work environment and study environment within the school.

The school’s reform agenda will particularly focus on:

• Employment and Recruitment. The school will streamline its employment procedures and recruitment processes to ensure a smoother and more transparent process.
• Sustainable Faculty Development. Investments will be made in long-term strategies and resources for staff development and career support, including strengthening the collegial work culture through skills development and common frameworks to improve the work environment.
• Equality, Diversity, and Equal Opportunities. The school will continue to work towards achieving a balanced faculty by actively promoting diversity and inclusion.

The action plan for KTH for the period 2024-2026 is now published. KTH:s verksamhetsplan 2024–2026 This document includes the action plans for all schools. Our action plan focuses on three main areas: continuous support for research and infrastructure to maintain excellence, improved quality in undergraduate and doctoral education, and enhanced working and study environments for sustainable faculty renewal.

As I mentioned in my previous post, I will share the content and motivations behind our action plan in a series of three posts. In my previous post, I covered research and infrastructure. Today, I will focus on education. In the upcoming post before the summer break, I will reflect on faculty renewal and the work environment.

Beyond the strategic evaluation of the programs, which is an ongoing discussion at the central level, I believe two important questions should be central to our school’s education portfolio: What is the ideal profile of the educator we want for our students? How can we ensure that our resources effectively foster this educational environment?

Our students should have access to the best expertise in their field of study, which means that even for basic courses, the ideal teacher is an active researcher with strong pedagogical skills. To achieve this, we need to organize our resources so that all faculty members are involved in teaching responsibilities, including classroom contact with students, course development, course management, and program management, while also having the resources to actively pursue research. The balance between teaching and research time will, of course, depend heavily on the specific research area.

A relevant question is: do our financial resources allow for a volume of faculty actively involved in teaching while also having access to research time and grants? This has been our aim for many years, but our internal funding is not yet organized and distributed to fully sustain this model.

One quick fix could be to change our strategy to allow for personnel with only teaching duties alongside a “research-oriented tenure track system.” While I do not want to completely exclude this option, I believe there are other approaches we should try first. Instead of optimizing the volume and composition of the faculty to fit our current teaching and management roles, we could explore whether optimization is possible within our programs and courses. We need to create a sustainable work environment for our faculty, as many are currently overburdened with teaching assignments and educational management roles.  Time for pedagogical development and education renewal, the creation of new courses and examination methodologies, should be integrated into a balanced system, rather than being treated as additional tasks.

Our school currently oversees four five-year engineering programs, which are among the top at KTH in terms of student applications and the average grades of admitted students, 11 master’s programs, and seven Ph.D. programs. Our immediate goal, as outlined in the school’s decision (Beslut om direktiv för revidering av masters- och doktorsprogrammen vid SCI), is to investigate the possibility of reducing the number of our master’s and doctoral programs, optimizing our course offerings, and, in the long term, creating processes and resources for better course cooperation with Stockholm University and other nearby universities.

Here is the text regarding education contained in the school’s VP (translated from Swedish):

The school’s reform work will focus on providing the faculty with the conditions necessary to improve the quality of programs and courses. This will be achieved by optimizing the range of master’s and doctoral programs, creating more collaborations and synergies, reshaping teaching and examination methods, and streamlining administrative processes.

The main focus of the school’s reform agenda in undergraduate and doctoral education will be:

• Sustainable staffing with capacity for development. The school will prioritize ensuring a stable workforce that has the opportunity for continuous development and improvement.
• Breadth and depth. We aim to maintain subject breadth and depth while recognizing the need to reduce the number of master’s and doctoral programs as well as advanced-level courses. This will be done without reducing revenue or compromising the quality of education.
• Financial transparency. We will work towards increased clarity and openness regarding the school’s finances. This includes harmonizing compensation models between departments within undergraduate education and introducing a regulated compensation model for doctoral education.

As we advance with the SCI School’s reform agenda for 2024-2026, an integral part of KTH’s broader reform agenda, I would like to share a series of blog posts explaining the content and the rationale behind our agenda, which will be published before the summer. Today, I aim to focus on our research.

Research at SCI school has exceptional standing, both nationally and internationally. For those who are keen on numbers, our track record speaks for itself. Recognitions include several prestigious grants such as KAW, ERC, SSF, Energy Agency, which consistently highlight our faculty’s achievements. Moreover, it’s worth noting the significant number of faculty members who reached the final stages of these highly prestigious grants this year. For instance, we had four faculty members who were invited to the very last interview stage for an ERC advanced grant, something really remarkable!

Our strength lies not only in individual accomplishments but also in the diverse spectrum of research areas we excel in. Our school has a wide breadth of expertise, from fundamental theoretical studies to applied and industrially relevant research. This diverse landscape not only hosts strong research groups but also fosters opportunities for synergies and innovative research directions.

So, what should our research strategy be? I firmly believe that our focus should be on robust recruitments and creating conditions conducive to attracting and retaining top talent. In recent years, we’ve witnessed significant recruitments, partly thanks to the generous start packages provided by various Wallenberg initiatives. However, it’s imperative to acknowledge the constraints imposed by our recruitment focus areas. Now is probably a good time to reassess our recruitment strategy and align it with the potential of our research areas.

Finally, the internal financial support scheme for our researchers and infrastructure is a constant challenge and needs to be addressed. Successful and impactful research needs stable financial conditions, allowing for long-term research projects and state-of-the-art infrastructure.

Here is the English translation of the section from the school’s reform agenda concerning research.

The successful and internationally renowned research activities of the school require continuous support for research and infrastructure to maintain its excellence in a competitive environment. Infrastructure is crucial for research, education, and collaboration at the school and is utilized by various research groups, educational programs, and other stakeholders both within and outside of KTH. Especially significant are the central infrastructures with versatile applications and the cutting-edge laboratories.

To achieve this goal, the school will focus on:

• Stable research and development of (FoFU) funding. The school will strive for a more transparent and stable FoFU model in accordance with the upcoming reforms at KTH.
• Long-term sustainable infrastructures. The school will initiate a review of the organization of the central laboratories to clarify goals, mandates, and responsibilities, as well as develop principles for the operation of cutting-edge laboratories to ensure long-term sustainability.

The Borelius Medal was established in 1998, with support from the Engineering Physics Faculty Board. The medal is named in honour of Gudmund Borelius (1889-1985), who was professor of physics at KTH, 1922-1955, and initiated the civ. ing. programme in Engineering Physics in 1932. Since the year 2000, the Medal was awarded annually to individuals who have made particularly valuable personal contributions to Engineering Physics at KTH. The Medal was last awarded in 2021.

Following the dedicated stewardship of emeritus Lektor Gunnar Benediktsson for many years, and a brief pause for a renewal process, the Medal will now continue as an award in the name of Gudmund Borelius, supported by the School. The Medal will recognize “an outstanding contribution to the development and success of Engineering Sciences at KTH”, rather than solely Engineering Physics.

A selection committee, Torbjörn Bäck (Physics), Ardeshir Hanifi (Engineering Mechanics), Mark Pearce (Chair), Jennifer Ryan (Mathematics), Yasmine Sassa (Applied Physics), and Maria Giamouridou (PhD student representative, Physics), has been appointed by the School with a mandate of four years. The Medal will be awarded every year at the School party.

We take this opportunity to thank Gunnar Benediktsson for his dedication and hard work over the years. He has upheld this tradition, and brought knowledge and enthusiasm to the award ceremonies. Gunnar has graciously agreed to write a historical account of the Medal, which we will present to future recipients with pride.

We eagerly anticipate congratulating the upcoming winners!

Read more about Gudmund Borelius and the Borelius Medal (in Swedish) Gudmund Borelius och boreliusmedaljen

A comprehensive reform agenda for the next three years, describing areas for improvement and strategic priorities, will be part of the forthcoming KTH action plan (verksamhetsplan). Each School will have its own reform agenda.

Despite our School’s stable financial situation, which does not require immediate actions, it is becoming increasingly evident that our educational and research resources must be optimized in order to cultivate a more sustainable working environment.

With this in mind, on February 22-23, the School management, Department management, and Faculty Board convened for a 2-day retreat at Näsby Slott. During the retreat, there was fruitful deliberation on the dimensioning of the School’s faculty and teaching portfolio, among other key topics.

This productive exchange of ideas resulted in significant progress and laid the foundation for future work. Ideas generated during the retreat will be further explored, discussed at all levels, and refined to ensure an effective and considered implementation in the upcoming academic years. Moving forward, the Faculty Board will assume an increasingly central role in guiding our School’s development in line with both the global and local reform agendas. The collaboration between management and collegial representation will ensure a balanced approach to implementing the necessary reforms.