New committees to strengthen strategic work from January 2025
At the last meeting of the Faculty Board, decisions were taken on the two new committees that will take effect from January 2025 in connection with the Board's increased responsibility for recruitment: the Recruitment Committee and the Docent Committee. These committees mark an important step in the work to decentralise and streamline the processes within faculty recruitment and docentships.
Pernilla Hagbert , Vice-chair of the Faculty Board, explains more about the changes and their importance.
- This is an important step for us. The Recruitment Committee and the Docent Committee will be formally under the Faculty Board and will help to ensure that decisions are prepared and taken closer to the organisation. The former central appointments committee will be dissolved and the former recruitment and docent committees will be replaced by fixed committees at school level. The aim is to create shorter lead times and higher quality processes to make the management of recruitments and docentures more strategic and efficient. The actual structure of the committees has been decided centrally so that it will work in the same way for all the schools. We will also have two new administrative officers at the school who will work closely with the Recruitment and Docent Committees.
How has the Board worked to appoint the committees?
- The teacher members of the Faculty Board first developed proposals for possible nominees in dialogue with the Heads of Departments. A small working group consisting of Head of School Björn Berggren, Jenny Paulsson, Helena Mattsson, as well as FFA Karin Edvardsson Björnberg and myself were then tasked at the meeting in November to develop a sharp proposal for last week's board meeting.
What were the criteria?
- We have worked to achieve a good balance between experience, gender and subject representation. One challenge in terms of ensuring diversity in the committees is that the recruitment committee has a Swedish language requirement, which can affect the possibility of including international perspectives. Members of the committee need to
have a teaching position and in order to be able to manage the recruitment of professors, it has been deemed that the majority of members should be professors. When looking at criteria for appointing members, it has also been particularly important to us that the composition includes both people with substantial experience of recruitment processes and new members to ensure the development of expertise within the faculty. The fact that our activities include engineering, architecture, design, humanities, social sciences and technology also needs to be reflected in the committees. At ABE, for example, we also have positions on an artistic basis, so we have assessed that this expertise is needed.
Is it the same for the Docent Committee?
- Both the Recruitment Committee and the Docent Committee have been formed with a focus on gender balance and representation from different subject areas. But for the Docent Committee, there are slightly different requirements, such as having your own docenture and experience of teaching and supervising doctoral students. The Docent Committee is a bit more similar to the previous Docent Committee and consists of a pool of eight members, while the new Recruitment Committee is more different from the previous organisation.
Launch in January 2025
The term of office for the new committees runs from 1 January 2025 to 1 March 2027. All new committees at KTH are offered training sessions in January to harmonise procedures across all schools, which will be particularly important now that the central appointments committee disappears.
- The new organisation is very much an opportunity to spread responsibility across the school, in line with the Faculty Board's focus on collegiality within ABE. It's great to see how many people have agreed and want to contribute. This is an opportunity not only to take responsibility for the development of the school, but also to strengthen the academic environment.
What does this mean for the Faculty Board going forward?
- The new committees will free up time for the Faculty Board to work more strategically and deepen its quality work. The meeting also highlighted the need to ensure a good supporting documentation for the Board's decisions, which will be particularly important as the working methods are further developed.
How has the work otherwise been going over the past year?
- We have found forms that work, but it is clear that the new tasks will affect how we work in the future. It has been a very informative and interesting year. The work in the Board and with the school management has worked very well, and I would like to pay a compliment to the Nomination Committee that proposed this group of teacher members. During the
autumn we have organised ourselves into a First and Second Cycle Education Committee and a Third Cycle (doctoral) Committee, and now at the turn of the year we will add the new Recruitment Committee and the Docent Committee. It is an exciting time, and I look forward to seeing how we can develop our work further over the next year.
What's next?
- The Board has several important issues on the table, including the consultation round on the career system, broadened recruitment and participation, and how we can clarify the quality work in research, as well as continue the work in education, doctoral education and lifelong learning. There are a lot of new things coming at the same time and the Board is part of setting the framework and the strategic discussion. Our upcoming internat with the school management in January will be an opportunity to discuss strategies for the future and how we can further develop our work. We will also continue with workshops in the departments on collegiality at local level.