HoD News - 15 August 2018

Dear colleagues,

Welcome back from your well-deserved vacations, and welcome to our many new colleagues who have joined the department over the summer. I hope that you will settle in well at our department, in our city, and in our country for those of you who are international.

The coming academic year at the department has many things on the agenda: 

• The relocation of faculty and sections during the coming months.
• Involvement of faculty and staff in the plans for the move to the University City (Campus 2.0), which is expected to take place 5-6 years ahead.
• The management team will continue its work on improving the coordination of course administration within the department.
• Also, we will initiate the plans for improving the norm system for teaching and administrative tasks at the department and the change from Vipomatic to the new Excelsior norm system.

Several of these topics will be discussed at the faculty meeting to be held at Hotel Opus, Horsens, 20-21 November.

In the near future, I am going to meet with all the sections within the department to discuss recruitment plans, the new economy model for Aarhus BSS, which has consequences for our incentive structure to generate revenue, as well as other topics of relevance. The section heads will inform you about the tentative schedule for these meetings, and I will welcome suggestions for other themes. Soon, I will also invite junior faculty members (assistant professors and post docs who have been at the department for minimum one year) for a conversation about career plans as an offer to supplement the MUS meetings with the section heads.

Department members continue being successful in attracting external research funding. In addition to department funded positions at all levels, a significant number of positions at the junior level will soon be posted in connection with specific external grants. The management team has decided that in order to optimize and focus the search process, the department will be present at the European Job Market recently launched by the European Economic Association to be held in Naples 6-7 December. Also, the department will be present at other focussed international job markets arranged in Europe in addition to the AEA-ASSA Job Market Meeting in Atlanta, USA in January 2019. It is our hope that a more focussed search will increase our success rates in the recruitment process. Internal candidates are equally invited to apply for position openings.

In one of the coming newsletters, I will provide further information about recruitment plans and deadlines for openings within the department at the assistant, associate, and full professor level.

Niels Haldrup