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The FSW community gives valuable feedback on the faculty vision and strategy plan

On 22 April, all students and staff of the Faculty of Social and Behavioural Sciences received an invitation to join the conversation about the faculty vision and strategy plan. They could do that by attending one of the feedback sessions on 10, 11 and 12 May. Those sessions were a success: the Faculty Board sincerely thanks everyone who has contributed.

The five consultation gatherings yielded good conversations and valuable feedback on the ‘crayon outline’ (the 80% version) of the vision and strategy plan (VSP). During the sessions, the different topics and themes of the plan were discussed in great detail; sometimes in a larger group, sometimes in a personal dialogue.

It is tentatively concluded that the themes ‘Work pressure’ and ‘Social safety’ are priorities, says Board Secretary Jordi Kerkum. Now the next phase of the process begins: in the next few weeks, all collected input will be processed and added to the feedback that is brought in by the Institutes and the Faculty Council, but also by individuals who have taken time out of their day to share their thoughts via email. In dialogue with the original writing teams, this will result in a draft, with the goal to get to decision-making before the summer.

Those attending: why did they decide to contribute?

Christine Espin, Professor at the Institute of Education and Child Studies: ‘Our research goal is not (only) wellbeing, but: how to help children learn? Learning and education are nearly always a huge part of social sciences. I don’t see that in our vision yet, so I indicated that.’

Leila Demarest, Assistant Professor at the Institute of Political Science: ‘Teaching staff has to be sought every year, even though we had really good ones, and they need to be trained every year. Sometimes they are not that good either, because they don’t have teaching skills yet; so this is also bad for education. So if there is one concrete point that the plan should really look further on, it’s the teaching staff situation.’

Eleanor Daw, third-year student of Child and Education Studies: ‘The most important thing for me was that you can’t just say you have all these ideas if you’re not actually going to act on them. I thought: if I ask how they are going to do what they say, I can help make the plans more concrete.’

Monique van der Geest, HR-adviser: ‘In my opinion, diversity, inclusion and social safety are the prerequisites for the entire plan. Whether people feel safe to share things, that makes or breaks it all.’

Read the final VSP

Out of all the responses came a renewed document, that has been approved by the faculty board.

Read the VSP

Photos: Abel van de Sluis
Text: Emma Knapper

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