Mikael on KTH's management visit
The Head of School, Mikael Lindström, writes about CBH's Management Group's meeting with KTH's management recently, when several of the CBH School's future challenges were discussed.
Last Wednesday, the President, Vice President and University Director of KTH visited with CBH Management Group. Issues we wanted to discuss were: Step two school merger educational programs, strategies for KTH Campus Solna and KTH Campus Flemingsberg and development of the administration.
The principal wants us to work at a local level within the school, with what the programs should look like, but we can also think outside school boundaries and see the synergy effects between the schools. An important part of future biotechnology education lies within computer science and we need people with knowledge of both subjects. Through a collaboration between Campus Flemingsberg and Campus Solna, the CBH School could become incredibly strong. Another trend we are seeing is that the number of international students at master's level is increasing. Swedish students usually choose "mapped" educations while international students look more at courses and development opportunities, they are thus not as tied to our different campuses. The CBH School has several world-leading researchers who are teachers, and parts of our teaching are significantly more on the research front compared to most other large universities.
When it comes to the location of our various campus environments, the President specifically mentioned SciLifeLab. Researchers at the CBH School had the opportunity to throw themselves into Covid-19 testing at a very short notice, and the proximity to KI was important. When it comes to Campus Flemingsberg, the organization is now healthy and we only need to work with the rental cost, i.e. more staff in the house. The President mentioned that one opportunity is to increase our presence in Flemingsberg with more research groups. It is also an administrative challenge to have several geographically spread campuses. If you want to lead from a distance, you need clearer leadership and that takes care of both technical and practical details. From the management there is a desire for a more uniform support and then we need to work through each administrative process with clear roles. We know from our own CBH organization that the question: "Who should I turn to and what skills does this person have," is important. In October, the President will issue a number of guidelines on how the administration should be developed in the future.
Mikael