The pandemic is still relatively fresh in our minds. It was fantastic to see the efficiency with which teachers and other staff reorganised the entire operation from one day to the next. The same can be said for our students. We worked together across faculties and academic areas to deal with the pandemic and in our balanced budget project. While the challenges may have differed to some extent, the measures have been largely the same. Among other things, this has resulted in a drop in the rate of doctoral student recruitment in general and independent of faculty. A certain volume of doctoral education is necessary to maintain and develop both excellence and breadth in the academic environment at all faculties.
We have also worked with the tenure track system introduced at Stockholm University shortly before we took office. We have recruited associate senior lecturers, senior lecturers and professors. This work has been successful, and many of those we recruited have already been promoted to a higher teaching position. Cooperation between the academic areas is working extraordinarily well, and most of the time we arrive at common positions on matters of principle despite differences in subject background. The ability to cooperate has been put to the test in connection with calls for research grants, where Stockholm University as a whole has been awarded a limited number of nominations. A very recent example of this is the work to prepare Stockholm University’s twelve nominations for the call for Wallenberg Academy Fellows. First, the two academic areas had separate processes, which was quite challenging, and then the deputy vice presidents discussed which nominations, overall, would be most favourable for SU as a whole. Of SU’s 12 nominations, no less than eight went to interview and just the other day we were informed that all eight will also be appointed as Fellows. We are now eagerly awaiting the results of the evaluation of the Wallenberg Scholars nominations, where the academic area management teams and the nominees have put in a substantial amount of work of a similar scale.
So our terms of office are now coming to an end, and new academic area management teams and a semi-new senior management team will take over. We are convinced that they will lead Stockholm University to further and new successes, and we look to the future with confidence.
We wish to warmly thank all of you whom we have had the privilege of working with over the past years.
Elisabeth & Henrik