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Dear colleagues and students,
This year's Christmas greeting will also be a farewell greeting after four eventful years as dean of the Faculty of Medicine. It is therefore natural to look back on these years and reflect on some of the most important events seen from the faculty management's vantage point.
The corona pandemic became our unforeseen challenge
A natural starting point is that something unforeseen always happens during a four-year period of election. In our case, it was undoubtedly the pandemic that, from March 2020, meant that our work over the next couple of years took a rather different turn than what we were prepared for. In general, it must be said that the faculty came out of it unscathed, not least because of the wholehearted effort and support of all staff and students in the changes we had to undertake so that teaching could be carried out under very unfamiliar conditions. From my point of view, this is by far the single issue I am most satisfied with when we now look back on our leadership period in the faculty.
New initiatives and collaborations
We started 2019 with general an aim to contribute to a good culture of cooperation in the faculty and that the dean's office should run overall management and hand over as much as possible of micromanagement and financial management to the departments and consolidate the good choices made by the previous dean.
The inner life of the faculty is largely characterised by the distribution of duties and responsibilities between the faculty level and departments and centres, and discussions about what belongs where. Being former head of one of the departments, it has been a goal for me to allow the departments themselves to take as much responsibility as possible for operations and their own finances within the faculty's overall regulations. However, when it comes to new initiatives, the faculty management has its own responsibility to take the initiative and implement changes. Some of the most important cases in this regard have been:
- New study places and plans and agreements on decentralised student teaching in professional studies
- Read more: UiO's first external campus (in Norwegian)
- Life Science Growth House
- Establishment of the Centre for Sustainable Education in the Health Sciences and the Pandemic Centre, supplemented by the reorganisation of the Centre for Global Health, all in one Unit for Sustainable Health.
- New Master's Programme in Public Health Sciences and Epidemiology (in Norwegian)
- Increased allocation of competitive EU funds during the four-year period
- Participation in the planning of the major construction projects The Life Science Building and the OUS development at the Norwegian Radium Hospital, Gaustad and Aker
In the faculty management, we greatly appreciate the many and useful channels of collaboration we have with the UiO management, which shows the strength and importance of being part of a large university. Externally, we have also benefited greatly from the various interfaces that we have with our most important partners in the health enterprises, especially OUS and Ahus, but also the management and hospitals in South-Eastern Norway Regional Health Authority (HSØ) outside the university hospitals. Another important arena for collaboration for me has been the regular and frequent meetings with the deans of medicine at the other three universities in Norway with medical programmes.
Tightening of government budgets
As is well known, there are now political signals indicating tighter public budgets for the higher education sector in the future, and the same applies to our most important partners in the health enterprises. This will clearly be a challenge for our faculty in the next few years. However, the faculty the has an orderly, balanced economy and has the strength to meet these challenges.
A pleasure to manage the faculty
When I announced my candidacy for the position of dean in the authumn of 2018, it was clear it would only be one period for me and my deanship anyway because of my age. Now that there are only days left before I step down, I am pleased to say that it has been a pleasure to manage the faculty and collaborate with so many talented colleagues, including students, administrative and technical staff, and all our academic staff at different locations in the organisation.
I would like to thank each of you for your hard work, constructive collaboration and, not least, all your contributions to making our faculty a great place to work. At the same time, I would like to wish the new dean the best of luck with the task. It will certainly present new and surprising challenges, but I am confident that our successors will also succeed in maintaining a steady course for the good of the faculty.
In conclusion, I would like to thank you on my behalf and wish you all a Merry Christmas and Happy New Year, and a well deserved holiday!
Yours sincerely, Ivar Prydz Gladhaug
Further reading
- Vice-dean of studies Elin Olaug Rosvold sums up the four-year period
- Vice-dean of research Jens Petter Berg’s summary of the four-year period