We see increased project financing and project applications, and growing student numbers. This brings our Faculty a lot of opportunities but also demand a lot from our employees, work pressure is high. There is also political pressure to reduce the number of international students.  How do we perceive expected growth? How big do we want our institutes and educational programmes to be? What mechanisms do we have to control this and what are choices that we can make?

We are a faculty with institutes that all have their own profile. But who are we as a faculty and what do we consider important? The University has 4 core values: Connecting, Innovative, Responsible, Free. What do these values mean to us? Are these our values? If not, what are our core values? How can we make better use of our values, together with the mission and profile of the faculty, and give more identity to the faculty based on the strengths of the institutes? What does that mean for our profiling and visibility?

As a faculty, we are taking steps regarding Recognition and Rewards. We work on leadership, our organisational structure and our organisational culture. How can we optimally deploy Recognition and Rewards within the faculty, to ensure that we continue to bind and retain young talents, in WP and OBP? What do we consider important in this? What criteria do we use in our yearly evaluations and what do we value to get promoted? 

The faculty is taking steps to get the basics right. The dilemma regarding support often rises from the following trade off: standardization and harmonization versus a diverse, tailor-made provision of services close to the work floor. What do we consider important in this? What is a good model for university cooperation between the levels university-faculty-institute? How do we achieve sharing of best practices? And what is the specific (and urgent) need for it?

A university without international collaborations, international staff and international students is almost unthinkable. Internationalisation can boost  our opportunities in research and education and may bridge gaps between countries and cultures through student and staff exchange and science diplomacy. At the same time, issues like knowledge security and societal and political debates on the growing influx of international students trigger questions about how international we want to be and how we want to be international. 

It is often stated that interdisciplinary collaboration between institutes and with other faculties opens new research avenues and should be stimulated and better facilitated by the faculty. This is also a key point in the university strategy. Where do we stand in this? What do we consider important and what do we need to achieve?

We are a faculty that is becoming increasingly diverse when it comes to attracting talent from elsewhere (students and employees). Our female talent is also moving onto higher positions more often, although that is not happening quickly enough and still suffer from a “leaky pipeline." How can and how do we want to strengthen DEI further, and what is needed to achieve that? “Diversity is a fact, inclusion is an act.”

The faculty has important and often very expensive high-quality facilities. The long-term financing of this is vulnerable. What do we consider important in this? How can we guarantee and upgrade the quality permanently? What is needed? How can we improve sharing facilities between researchers and institutes (and even with external partners).