Jasper's day
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.
Monday 8 July
‘These are the last busy weeks before the campus comes to relative calm. I am in the office at 9.00 hrs. for a full day. As a board, we start with the last board meeting with one of the institutes. We make a round twice a year, where we meet all the institute boards at length. The current round has as an important component the multi-year budget, which is taking shape under a dark star due to the new cabinet's outline agreement. Although the exact impact of this will not become clear until August or September, it is inevitable that the university will have to make significant cuts and, where possible, acquire additional resources in a smart way.
Details of the extent of the cuts for the faculty are not yet known. The university has chosen to wait a while for more clarity from The Hague. At the same time, a careful look at various aspects affecting our financial situation is already underway. This will involve three university working groups, one focusing on the organisation, one on costs and one on benefits. I myself will chair the benefits working group and hope that we can come up with some constructive strategies, because generating additional income is better than having to make cuts. We stand for this within the faculty as well, which is partly why we are committed to programmes like Beethoven.
Fortunately, we are not only talking about money. Faculty and university profiling themes are also discussed in this round of consultations. In most cases, we hear about interesting connections between institutes and also with other faculties, exactly what these themes aim to achieve. A broad internet consultation on the university themes is likely to take place in September. We hope that many of our staff will take time to contribute to this, so that the more science-oriented themes also have a proper place within the university.
I continue the day with a series of meetings, catch up with Carey on the agenda for the coming weeks and go to the consultation meeting with the Faculty Council. Again, the budget is the main topic. The council makes some valuable suggestions, which we will certainly take into account. The meeting goes quickly, which gives us as the board some time to brainstorm on the process we want to follow to meet the upcoming budgetary challenges. Like the Executive Board, we too are considering introducing a number of working groups to look broadly at different aspects of the faculty.
After this, I am rushing to The Hague, not to go home, but to attend the farewell of the former ministers of the Ministry of Education, Culture and Science. I have seen Robbert Dijkgraaf a lot in recent years and even before that we knew each other for a long time. We overlapped as PhD students in Utrecht and even earlier he attended working lectures with me, the senior student. By now, of course, he has long been the one teaching me things. It is nice to be able to attend this farewell, to thank him for everything he set in motion and what he stood for. It is a vibrant party with a wonderfully characteristic farewell speech by Robbert. For a moment, we put aside the bitter thought that much of the beauty he has unleashed will not be continued under the new cabinet. In the coming weeks and months, we will have to give that challenge enough attention. Not tonight. The swinging Hermes House Band is a huge help to that.’