Campaign TiSEM 2020

Ph.D. students are one of the key elements contributing to visibility and recognition of the school. We want TiSEM to enable candidates to realize top positions on the domestic and international labor markets. That calls for a deepening of the professional development of PhD students over the course of their PhD.

Prior financial difficulties, student growth, the bureaucratization of education, and the recent need to adapt to COVID-19 have absorbed considerable resources. Research at TiSEM is not where it once was. We want to push for more investment into attracting, retaining, and making room for the blossoming of top research talent.

Quality assurance in education should not take the autonomy of teachers away. We want to keep teachers in control of their classes and exams, and academic directors in control of their programs. Education bureaucracy should be kept to the minimum!

We want to see more women and international staff in charge. We work in a diverse environment, yet most senior positions lack diversity. We want this to change.

The use of digital tools had so far been left to the initiative of individual lecturers, and then was hurriedly promoted in reaction to COVID-19. It is time for the School to pro-actively think how and when digital tools should be used to further its own goals.

We are observing worrisome signs of Ph.D. students and faculty members getting overwhelmed by work pressure, a topic that has now attracted national attention. The School should systematically endeavor to prevent, detect and treat instances of work overload, unmanageable stress, and burn-out.

Research is suffering from the current crisis. Many researchers have had to cancel planned field or experimental work, and productivity is down everywhere. For Ph.D. students and junior faculty, this can jeopardize long-established plans and possibly derail promising careers. We want the School to assist especially young researchers through this crisis.

TiSEM has been at the forefront of internationalization efforts at the University. In all its policies, it should promote an open and tolerant attitude towards the many international students and staff members it attracts and take into consideration their possibly special needs.

Too many decisions are taken without a proper assessment of their likely consequences or identification of what top universities actually do. We push for the school management to benchmark the school against international best practices and make decisions on the basis of reliable evidence.