CBH's new management team complements each other
A few months ago, the CBH School got a new management team consisting of school director Amelie Eriksson Karlström and two deputy school directors: Mats Jonsson and Sebastiaan Meijer.
“The three of us working together feels great! We are a good team,” says Amelie Eriksson Karlström.
During the spring of 2023, Amelie Eriksson Karlström was the acting Head of School and led the work at CBH together with Deputy Head of School Sebastiaan Meijer. When she became Head of School on 1 July, Amelie chose to appoint an additional Deputy Head of School to share the workload.
“In the spring, it was just Sebastiaan and me, and it felt like we were just holding down the fort for a while. But now, we are a real team and can work more properly with a range of issues,” says Amelie Eriksson Karlström.
Different roles
The management team has divided the responsibilities among themselves. Amelie has the overall responsibility as Head of School and manages the contact with KTH's management and SciLifeLab. Sebastiaan is still head of department in Flemingsberg and works with the development there and with collaboration, and Mats works as head of faculty renewal (FFA), a role similar to one he has had before.
“When you have had that role and then got to relax for a few years, you miss being involved and being able to contribute in that way. What I am passionate about and have been doing for almost 20 years is recruitment and faculty development in one way or another, so I felt that this is perhaps the last chance to contribute on that front,” says Mats Jonsson.
A good team
All members of the management team emphasise that they enjoy working together and that they make a good team. According to Amelie, all three are quite different as people and therefore can contribute different things.
“For me, the team, with Amelie in the lead, is the most important thing, we complement each other and that makes me go to work with a good feeling,” says Sebastiaan Meijer.
There is no shortage of issues for the team to tackle. KTH is undergoing several changes: a campus review is underway, the university now has a joint operational support, new faculty boards will be introduced at the turn of the year and the economic conditions have changed significantly. This presents challenges that the CBH School's management needs to meet.
Major challenges
“The new premises cost model means that some departments' premises will be more expensive, and we may have to decrease the size of these. There is the new GRU funding allocation, where we are still calculating how it will affect the school. The President’s ambition is that as much GRU funding as possible should go towards what is being done in the classrooms, so I am hoping that it might be positive for our economy,” says Amelie Eriksson Karlström.
She aims to develop the school for the better and navigate the major changes affecting the entire KTH, especially the new economic conditions. To handle the situation well, the management team wants to build a structure, an organisation and a way of working that is sustainable over time and can develop the school further.
“There are a lot of difficult issues to handle, but I still feel positive and I think we can do something good at the CBH School. I don't want to sound negative, this will be great even if there will be some tough years with the economy,” says Amelie.
Text: Jon Lindhe