Jasper’s day – science domains, profiling themes and a daughter coming home
Monday 2 March – In a week full of spring sunshine, Jasper starts his day with a meeting with UNL. In the afternoon, he gets a taste of the enthusiasm among the teams working on the faculty’s profiling themes. The day ends with a warm welcome at home.
Jasper Knoester is the dean of the Faculty of Science. How is he doing, what exactly does he do and what does his day look like? In each newsletter, Jasper gives an insight into his life.
‘Spring has arrived, and the upcoming week looks beautiful. Just seeing the forecast, with plenty of sunshine, already lifts my mood. Today’s schedule also shows two highlights I’ve been looking forward to: a large meeting with the teams who will lead our faculty profiling themes, and the return of my daughter Jasmijn from Austria.
I make my way to the Gorlaeus Building at a relaxed pace this morning. After a few phone calls, I have my first meeting with Carey. Soon I’ll be travelling for two weeks, which puts quite a bit of pressure on the schedule. Carey works hard to make everything fit. We have to make choices.
Science domains in motion
Next is an online meeting with Caspar van den Berg, president of UNL, the umbrella organisation of Dutch universities. Once every quarter, the chairs of the four national science domains – natural sciences, engineering, social sciences and humanities, and medical sciences – meet with him to discuss current issues. I chair the natural sciences domain. Of course, the executive boards of the universities are the key players within UNL. But the broad use of sector plans, funded by the Ministry of Education, Culture and Science, has made these domains more important as platforms for national coordination and collaboration. Since 2023 we’ve therefore had these regular meetings.
The discussion focuses on how the current political agenda affects higher education. The first topic is the coalition agreement. For education and innovation, it looks much better compared to the previous government, but many details are still unclear. UNL wants to reduce the number of separate funding schemes, because they create a lot of administrative burden.
Education on the current political agenda – sector plans and internationalisation
We also talk about new sector plans. UNL supports them, but it remains to be seen how our new minister will approach this. Another topic is internationalisation and the proposed law on international (English-taught) education programmes. The tone in the coalition agreement about the importance of attracting international talent is much more positive than what we’ve heard from The Hague in recent years. At the same time, there will still be a strict upper limit on the total number of international students entering bachelor’s programmes in the Netherlands, and universities will have to divide that number among themselves. The science domains will play a role in this at a later stage, Caspar tells us. As far as I’m concerned, that’s the right order.
Making plans for the profiling themes
In the afternoon we meet at the Lorentz Center with the teams leading our faculty profiling themes. Today’s aim is to start working on year plans and communication plans. We begin with a plenary session, where I once again explain the purpose of the themes in my introduction. We want to strengthen inspiration and collaboration across institute boundaries, around topics where we have a shared strength within the Faculty of Science. We also want to present these strengths more clearly to the outside world, so that we can increase our visibility, impact and opportunities for funding.
Enthusiasm and cross-connections
After the plenary session, the six teams start working on their plans, supported by colleagues from our faculty departments of Communication and Marketing and Academic and Strategic Affairs. I spend time with several teams. What stands out is the strong enthusiasm to organise activities and bring communities together. The different perspectives and questions are striking as well. That also becomes clear during the feedback session at the end of the afternoon, which leads to some valuable exchange between the themes. People also notice interesting links in the content itself. It’s a successful meeting, and I hope the enthusiasm will soon spread to larger groups across the faculty.
I return to the Gorlaeus Building for two short meetings. After that I head home quickly, where I cook and have dinner with Kamiel. Later I read a few documents for tomorrow, while also helping Kamiel prepare for a Mathematics D test.
At half past nine we drive to Rotterdam Airport to pick up Jasmijn. Over the past few months she’s been working as a ski instructor in Austria. I’m looking forward to having her home again for a while; in May she leaves for Australia, so we’ll have to make the most of the time we have. Once we’re home, we catch up but she soon gets tired and not long after midnight the house suddenly becomes very quiet. Real highlights are often short-lived, and that’s true this time as well. Tomorrow, though, I’ll no doubt enjoy hearing many more of her stories.’