A more attractive campus for students and employees

Last spring, the new university management was clubbed with four new names on the board, and recently Anna Olofsson took office as the new pro-rector. Soon it will also be time for a new university director to step in. The advertisement was published last week and the hope is that the new university director will be installed by the turn of the year, says Anders Fällström.
– We would like to find someone who is both inward and outward oriented, that is, who is both committed and interested in developing the administration and at the same time externally oriented, and of course, has experience in leading.

Attractive and vibrant

So, what is on the agenda for the new management? A lot, says Anders Fällström.
– There are a few things that a new management must tackle. One of them is to continue working with the campus of the future and drive it forward, because we want an attractive and vibrant campus. This means partly that we want more people on campus in the form of students, partly that we who work should be here to a greater extent, at least three days a week. Therefore, we also need to think about how to make the workplace more attractive, because we want people to want to be here, not be forced to. We believe that it is more beneficial for the university and our development if we meet more physically, it is often in corridors and at the coffee machine that the developing and creative conversations are born.

More campus students

An analysis to review how more students should want to study on campus is also underway. Today, around 60 percent of students study remotely, but Anders Fällström would prefer to see the numbers reversed.
– Of course, we would prefer that 60 percent be on campus, but that does not mean that we want to shut down or reduce the ambition for distance learning. We are, I would like to say, perhaps Sweden's best distance learning university and we shall continue to be, he says.

New courses

The analysis work involves, among other things, looking at where in the country the university recruits best and what type of education would be attractive to campus students. In the long run, this means that new courses may become relevant.
– But it is further away in time, on the other hand, we hope to see things happen as early as next autumn, says Anders Fällström.

More external funding

Another task for the new management is to work on finding external funding for both research and development. This as neither the recently passed budget bill nor the government pays for new state funds. Instead, you have to look elsewhere, says Anders Fällström
– We will have to increase the number of commissioned courses, charge higher fees for international students and apply for more EU funds for research, he says.