Building for the future
It is no secret that our fine faculty faces a huge financial challenge in the coming years in the context of austerity. For the 2024 and 2025 budgets, all the faculty's academic departments and the faculty office have made a huge effort to come up with concrete austerity measures. For the year 2024, we are already seeing good results. However, we are not there yet and, as a faculty, we need to make concrete and strategic choices regarding our teaching and research portfolio.
This past 14 and 15 October, the heads of departments and the faculty board met for two days to discuss how we are together shaping the future for our faculty. During the first day, by listening carefully to each other, summarising and asking through, a large number of issues were expressed concretely both by the department heads and faculty board members. Some examples are: uncertainty about the further financial impact of the cabinet's outline agreement, autonomy versus collectivity and the way we cooperate and communicate with each other.
The second day focused on identifying issues that we as department heads and the board can and want to influence, such as workload management, attracting and retaining talent and the high overhead on research projects. We agreed that we act from the best intentions with an eye for the bigger picture and that we continue to ask critical questions that keep each other on our toes. To ensure good cooperation, we discussed the structure and frequency of the heads of department consultations, the administrative consultations between the departments and the Faculty Board and the role of programme directors in strategic choices in the education portfolio.
During the department heads' meetings with the faculty board, we will work together to make strategic choices for the multi-year budget 2026-2030, which should be ready by summer 2025. Early next year, the director of finance and the CvB will be invited to meet with the department heads and the board.
I look back on two good and meaningful days where we were able to build together on how we will shape the future together. That is the basis for putting our shoulders to the wheel to take the steps needed to make our wonderful faculty a resilient and resilient one.