Lena Mäler: Teacher positions – our key strategic tool

In an organisation run by knowledge seekers, our colleagues are our most important asset – the core of both education and research. This makes teaching positions one of our most strategically important tools. In my role as Dean and Deputy Vice President of the Science Academic Area, I often hear many good things colleagues at other universities have to say about how Stockholm University recruits teachers. In both our academic areas, science and the human science, the university has transparent processes for hiring teachers. This applies all the way from the departments’ work to develop an employment profile through decisions by area and faculty boards, to management at our offices, to notifications of vacancies and recruitment. We also have good methods for evaluating and assessing promotion cases. Overall, we take care to announce vacancies that are strategically important for the university’s operations. For all these reasons, it feels absolutely right to describe employment as one of our most important strategic tools. Fresh influences from new employees develop our operations, and that is crucial to both our research and education.

Of course, we must do our utmost to maintain the good processes we already have in place (the organisation of which varies somewhat between our two academic areas), but it goes without saying that we must also strive to become even better. For this reason, at the suggestion of one of our heads of department, we in the Science academic area made teacher recruitment the topic of the latest meeting of our heads of department. This gave the heads of department an opportunity to discuss and exchange experiences. Many pearls of wisdom were shared, and we discussed issues ranging from shortening lead times in the employment process, to the departments’ work with strategic selections in their notifications of vacancies, to how the teacher proposal boards work.

In the Science academic area, several parallel investigations are also underway in order to improve our work. Several working groups have been appointed, one with the task of investigating how we can strengthen and develop the evaluation of pedagogical qualification in teacher recruitments, and another with the task of reviewing how we can best make strategic financial investments in connection with teacher recruitments. The Pedagogical qualification working group reviews criteria for pedagogical qualification for both promotion and recruitment and discusses the value of pedagogical experts in different contexts, all with the aim of improving our assessment of pedagogical qualifications. In terms of strategic investments in connection with recruitment, the task of that working group is to review the level at which responsibility for these investments ought to be taken — at the departmental level, the faculty level, or jointly.

The Science academic area has decided that the departments should use recruitment committees for filling each vacancy. These committees are tasked with ensuring that the departments work to get the best conceivable candidates to apply, which also means actively striving to ensure that we achieve the most equal playing field possible in our search. We are now reviewing the role of the committees. To this end, we have tasked former Section Dean Berit Olofsson with investigating how the recruitment committees are doing in terms of fulfilling their intended purposes.

I am very pleased that we have initiated these development projects. However, in closing I wish to emphasise that all these undertaking are part of a continuous effort to improve an already well-functioning hiring process of which we should all be proud.

This text is written by Lena Mäler, Deputy Vice President. It appears in the section ”Words from the University’s senior management team”, where the management take turns to write about topical issues. The section appears in News for staff.