The current organisational structure with faculties is not ideal for a future-proof university. But which structure is? That is what the 'governance' working group discussed with staff and students on Thursday 7 March.
An invitation to join the discussion on TU/e 'governance'? That sounds boring! But knowing that the future of the current faculties is at stake, many employees and a single student came to Ceres. In a packed room, the working group asked for feedback from the TU/e community. Because there were not enough chairs, people had to stand in the back of the room.
During a short introduction by Robert-Jan Smits, chairman of the Executive Board, and Edwin van den Heuvel, dean of the Faculty of Mathematics & Computer Science and chairman of the governance working group, the challenges facing the TU/e were outlined: the outside world is changing rapidly and the social issues for which the TU/e wants to offer solutions require a decisive organisation. Isn't TU/e organised too much in silos? For example, technology development in energy transition requires knowledge and research from various faculties: physics, chemistry, mechanical engineering, electrical engineering. Is a clustering of faculties therefore a good idea?
Artificial intelligence
"The meta-level is really way too high. I can't do anything with this at all," said one professor before walking out of the session. The other attendees broke up into groups to reflect on the challenges (including becoming more decisive) and solution directions (e.g. bundling of faculties). Each group could speak its feedback into a dedicated microphone. The audio files were collected and will be analysed using artificial intelligence.
In between, there was time for questions. Will there be any separate discussions with students, someone asked working group chair Van den Heuvel. "Not yet," he responded. "But we are still going to do that," he promised.
If the TU/e goes from nine to, say, three faculties, isn't there a risk that the university goes from an organisation with several relatively low walls to one with fewer but higher walls, someone wondered. "We have to properly identify the drawbacks of solution options," responded Van den Heuvel, who stressed several times that nothing is fixed yet. "No choices have been made yet."
Joint direction
Another asked whether the working group is considering actually expanding the number of faculties. "No," Van den Heuvel said. "That would make the organisation even more complex. We already see during meetings that it is sometimes difficult to find a common direction."
The faculties are now highly autonomous and all have their own work processes. This sometimes makes it difficult for support services, as they have to approach each faculty in a different way. "To what extent do we want to standardise things?", Van den Heuvel asked his audience. "We tend to say that you should do a lot of things all the same, then the services can do their work better." But, he added, if the TU/e went to three faculties, it would be feasible for the services to make specific working arrangements for each.
At the end of the meeting, the audience was asked who was open to reducing the number of faculties. A good number of hands went up, but it did not become clear whether there was a majority. Perhaps analysis of the submitted audio files will offer a better picture. To be continued.
Source:Cursor News
Photo: Cursor
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