Teaching-research link in focus for Academic Vice President candidates

Ewa Ehrenborg began with a presentation of her career and her various assignments. When it comes to tomorrow's challenges, it is important to look at society's need for well-trained employees, she stated.

“We need to prepare our students to face a changing healthcare landscape with more home care, more digital visits and a greater focus on prevention and public health,” says Ewa Ehrenborg.

Recruitment should be based on the needs of education and increase teaching skills, she emphasised, while at the same time raising the credit value of teaching.

"We need strategic teaching positions including assistant professorships. And incentive structures for increased engagement.”

Ewa Ehrenborg also wants to review the need for different types of teaching skills and emphasised increased collaboration with municipalities, other universities and the life-science sector and the ability of university health units to provide optimal training.

She also stressed the need for a review of course offerings in collaboration with other universities.

He also said that research and education should be closely linked and that the best researchers should be actively involved in teaching. In addition, he argued that it is important that education is viewed with the same prestige as research.

“Our teachers will be visible on the KI website and in newsletters in the same way as researchers. And we will only give central KI funding to researchers who are actively involved in teaching. As well as emphasising that education can stimulate research.”

The presentations were followed by a Q&A session where the audience asked questions about how the candidates wanted to strengthen and structure the working environment for students, and how they want to increase motivation to become clinical supervisors.

The audience also asked how to motivate teachers and staff to stay within KI. Rune Brautaset argued that different departments have different challenges.

“But an important factor in retaining teachers is offering them time to do research. We have to make sure that the funds we have received for research follow the teaching assignments," says Rune Brautaset.

Top researchers in first- and second-cycle education

Ewa Ehrenborg said that this issue requires joint efforts with the departments, heads of department and those responsible for first- and second-cycle education.

"In addition, we need to review our offerings. As a top researcher, it is difficult to get into undergraduate education. For example, we have many people who don't speak Swedish, and that makes clinical training difficult,” says Ewa Ehrenborg.

Both were supported by Maria Hagströmer, who also highlighted the need for joint employment.

"We need, in collaboration with the region, to create joint positions at lecturer level. Today we have high demands on lecturers. Are there perhaps other ways to combine the tasks of working clinically and being a teacher? The working environment also plays a role where we need to make teachers more visible," says Maria Hagströmer.

Nick Tobin highlighted Region Stockholm’s strategy to become one of the world's leading life-science regions by 2025.

"We will lose people to the life-science industry as we will never be able to compete with their salaries. That's why we need to focus on strengthening the ‘we’ feeling by, for example, having the heads of department in each department know everyone better. In addition, the career ladder needs to be seen as a living document that is changing.”

Finally, Nick Tobin raised the issue of a tax cut for researchers, similar to the one that international researchers can enjoy today.