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?

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.

We often hear that more collaboration with external parties is desirable and important for the future-proofing of our faculty. How does entrepreneurship fit into this, also for students? How do we facilitate external cooperation properly? And what should be the role of the University’s technology transfer office LURIS ?

Our faculty is strong in curiosity-driven research. However, societal impact and a more application-oriented way of working is widely considered increasingly important, both in research and education. Should we change our focus? How do we ensure a proper connection with important societal challenges and with the developments in the non-academic environment? 

We are a research-driven faculty and we highly value the teaching-research connection in our education. However, in our policies and practices research and education are generally treated as separate entities. Is the so called teaching-research nexus sufficiently safeguarded via the appointment of staff in which researcher and teacher functions are combined?  What other opportunities exist to strengthen our teaching-research nexus?