HoD News - 5 December 2018

Dear colleagues,
Thank you to those of you who contributed to the discussions at the ECON residential meeting in Horsens two weeks ago. I hope you felt that the meeting was useful and productive, and I hope you had a chance to meet and chat with colleagues you normally do not see on a daily basis.

In the management team, we are very satisfied with the input we received for the two main topics: course coordination and the norm system. Thanks. The input material will now be studied carefully during the coming months.

We will work on a revised version of the “course document” distributed for the Horsens meeting. We will pay attention to clarifying the future organization and making it more transparent how the various educations are in focus as a central element of the future procedures for course coordination. Once a new document is ready, it will be distributed for discussions in the sections for feedback before the implementation of the new organization, which is scheduled to take effect on 1 June 2019.

During the spring months, we will also proceed with suggestions for adjustments of the norm system, and the views expressed in Horsens will be considered. It will never be possible to come up with a new norm system that everybody agrees upon, but we listen to your views, and the sections will get the opportunity to respond to the suggested system. Ultimately, the shape of the new norm system is a management decision. It is planned that the new norm system will commence on 1 February 2020 with tests using the Excelsior platform taking place during the autumn 2019.

Let me stress again that one of the main innovations of the plans for the future course coordination is to have a clearer delineation of responsibility delegated to the section heads, and with the norm system being a management tool as well as a tool to provide transparency for everybody. Also, I see these changes as a first step to generally delegate more responsibility to the section heads along a number of dimensions. This includes development of recruitment plans and career plans for junior faculty, strategy plans for attraction of external funding, amongst other things. The work of the section heads should be supported by section councils consisting of a group of tenured faculty members including the course coordinators of the relevant sections. The further plans for these organizational changes will be announced during the spring semester 2019.

Niels Haldrup