I had originally planned to write something about the profile area reform in this “Words from the Senior Management” piece, but there is no word yet on whether the research councils’ current proposal for a call and evaluation process will be accepted or not. We are not expecting to receive any decision on this in the near future, either. The Senior Management Team and subject area management teams have therefore suspended discussions on a possible profile area application for the time being.
I would instead like to return to a previous piece in which Yvonne Svanström discussed the central importance of our teacher recruitment processes. I fully agree that the importance of this cannot be overstated, as the scientific and teaching expertise of the teachers – i.e. the associate senior lecturers, senior lecturers and professors – lay the foundation for the quality of our education and research. The ability to build outstanding teaching and research environments with subject breadth and depth is crucial to the reputation of the university. A high standing reputation is important for our ability to attract prestigious external research grants, to attract students to our programmes and to attract highly qualified applicants for advertised positions in administration and academia.
The teacher recruitment work for both Human Science and Science is conducted within the common framework of the Rules of Employment for the Recruitment and Promotion of Teachers at Stockholm University (AOSU), which means that the processes and regulations are the same for both areas. However, there are area-specific criteria, guidelines and practical differences in how the work is carried out, and I would like to briefly describe the role of the experts in the recruitment process for Science.
The area’s academic appointments boards invite the experts to participate in their meetings with the right to speak, but without the right to vote. They attend sample lectures and research presentations, and also actively participate when candidates are interviewed by the board.
The experts also participate in the discussion prior to the board’s decision on which candidates to invite for interview. For the vast majority of recruitment cases, this process results in a unanimous board decision (proposal on who should be offered the position as the first choice), supported by the experts, which is then also recorded in the minutes. It is not uncommon for the proposal to deviate from the preliminary opinions of the experts, but even in such cases the experts have, so far and with very few exceptions, given their support to the decision as recorded in the minutes.
I interpret this to mean that both the application documents and the face-to-face meeting at the interview are necessary for both the board and the experts to fully assess the qualifications and potential of the candidates. I look forward to continued dialogue within and between our Senior Management Team and the faculty management teams on how best to learn from each other's experiences from the work of the academic appointments boards.
This article is written by Henrik Cederquist, Deputy Vice President for Science and professor at the Department of Physics. It appeares in the section “Words from the University’s senior management team”, where members of the management team take turns to write. The section appears in every edition of News for staff which is distributed to the entirety of the University staff.