HoD News - 10 June 2022

Dear colleagues,

New colleagues and promotions

Over the next couple of months, I look forward to welcoming new colleagues to the department. Also, I would like to congratulate those colleagues who have been promoted. In this week’s ECON newsletter, you will see a list of hires and promotions.

ECON budget

The budget revision ØR1 for Aarhus BSS and hence ECON has just been completed. In 2022, we face some budget challenges which mean that we have to put extra focus on our expenses and proper financial planning.

The majority of recent new recruitments are funded by external funds. In the coming years, it is essential that we have a continued focus on attracting external research funding, and I strongly encourage faculty members to discuss with your section heads the options of preparing applications for upcoming calls. I also encourage funding applicants to consider including funding of PhD students and derived costs as part of the budgets to strengthen the critical mass of our PhD programme beyond what can be funded by the BSS Graduate School. This is absolutely critical in order to offer a PhD course programme.

It is also important that everyone shows increased awareness regarding operating expenses that are not funded by external grants. I ask you to consider whether certain activities, IT acquisitions and other expenses can be postponed until next year.

NCRR

As mentioned in a previous newsletter, the executive team at Aarhus BSS has decided to split the National Centre for Register-Based Research (NCRR) from the Department of Economics and Business Economics. The final decision on the reorganisation has now been made, following a discussion of the matter in the faculty’s liaison committee on 2 May 2022. Enclosed in the ECON newsletter is a full statement made by the Dean’s office explaining the background of this decision in more detail.

For accounting reasons, the financial change took effect from 1 January 2022. The practical and administrative reorganisation, e.g., website changes and adaptation of various administrative systems, are still underway, but the full reorganisation is expected to be finalised by 1 August 2022. The centre is still physically located at Fuglesangs Allé.

I would like to thank NCRR and its members for the collaboration as part of the department for many years. Your contributions deserve appreciation, and I am sure that the new organization will provide even better conditions for NCRR to flourish as a lighthouse research centre at AU and BSS. I would like to mention here that I hope to see all NCRR employees at the ECON get-together on Friday 26 August.

Best practice

Over the past year, we have discussed, at all levels at the department - sections, LSU, Departmental Forum and the management team - how to adapt to the new ways of working following the COVID pandemic and long periods of remote working.

A common view expressed in the post-corona work survey conducted in August last year is that colleagues should keep their Outlook calendar up to date and clearly state if they are working remotely. This also includes the small notice board outside the office door. I encourage all faculty members to have a look at the ECON staff portal, where you can now find useful advice and recommendations about how to use the Outlook calendar effectively.

I wish you a good weekend.

Niels