Word of the Chair - A Year of Change
New BA International Studies Chair, Dr. Joost Augusteijn looks ahead to a period marked by renewal - a restructured programme, new challenges in staffing and the shared task of maintaining quality with fewer hands.
A new academic year, a new chair and for the next generation of students also a new programme structure. So change is in the air. You have no doubt all heard that compulsory redundancies of staff are no longer considered for our programme or in the whole faculty. That is of course excellent news. However, as the Faculty Board is insistent on making clear that does not mean we can lean back and do nothing.
Workloads for our staff will be under pressure and other staffing issues will arise as no new staff will be hired for the foreseeable future, not even in cases of retirement or people leaving for other reasons. That means we are forced to become more efficient in our teaching programme and ancillary activities because we will be working with fewer people. As I wrote in my farewell reflections on being Chair in 2020, I do like a challenge, finding day-to-day running of a programme a little mundane.
Although only starting on the first of September, I have hit the ground running by being involved before the summer in restructuring the programme and finding all kinds of other savings. This has been done to the satisfaction of other stakeholders, but that does not mean anything has changed yet. Making what is on paper a reality is the challenge we are facing in the coming year, so that the next cohort of students will still be taught a programme of high quality. This will require some extra physical and mental energy from all of us.
Fortunately, there are some promising signs to make this process a little less painful. Firstly, student numbers in the current first year are considerably higher than predicted. Depending on the administrative system we use we have either 409 or 398 students, about 50 more than budgeted for. The finances of the faculty are better than thought and hopefully our new government will appreciate the value of higher education and an international community a little more than the current one. It could hardly be otherwise.
Having been involved in university life for almost 45 years now, there are some hopeful lessons I have learned. Usually, problems look larger when you are facing them than that they turn out to have been afterwards. Change tends to make us feel that things are getting worse, but very soon we forget how it was and accept the new situation as the norm. Finally, let us try to work together on these sometimes difficult steps in good collegial and aimable spirit and, of course, that peace will descend on this earth.
All that taken into account I look forward to my new stint as chair of this beautiful programme that brings so many people together from so many different places.