Jos Schaeken appointed interim vice-dean: ‘The focus is on future-proofing the faculty’
Professor Jos Schaeken has been appointed interim vice-dean from 1 March. As Mirjam de Baar's successor, he will focus on future-proofing the education portfolio, particularly the master's programmes.
Schaeken has always alternated his teaching and research on Slavic languages with administrative responsibilities. For instance, he was previously Academic Director of LUCL, Dean of Leiden University College The Hague and Dean of the Leiden University Honours Academy. 'I’m now almost 63,’ he says. 'That puts me at a point in my career where I had two options: continue my working life along the same lines as in recent years, combining teaching and research, or use my experience and knowledge in the administrative sphere one more time to help the faculty move forward. I gambled that the latter option would be more fulfilling.'
On taking office, Schaeken finds a faculty in financial dire straits. In addition to an existing budget deficit, further cuts due to political choices are looming. ‘I was therefore specifically appointed as interim vice-dean,’ he says. 'That entails the task of making the faculty more future-proof than it is now within the coming two years. It helps that my predecessor Mirjam has taken master's education under her wing in recent years with extraordinary enthusiasm and expertise. At the same time, we are now in a situation where we want to go from two vice-deans to one. That means we have to take a critical look at what is strictly necessary and what can be slimmed down.'
Promising master's programmes
Schaeken's focus will be on the opportunities offered by master's programmes. ‘If we do nothing, student enrolment will continue to decline. We simply cannot afford that: we need sufficient mass to keep the faculty afloat.' This could have benefits for students, he argues. 'Let me stick to my own programme, Russian Studies. It’s a small bachelor's degree. If you have been taught by the same faces there for three years, it makes perfect sense that you want something different in the master's after that. Then it would be nice if Russian in the master's focused more on something like Security Studies, for example.’
‘The subject knowledge is preserved, while the student gets something new. Especially now that the Internationalisation in Balance Act may make it more difficult to attract international students, we have to look carefully at what we can offer our own students and those from other Dutch universities. Amsterdam, Utrecht, even Groningen are actually just around the corner.'
Working with the rest of the board, he also wants to take a close look at the overall organisational structure. ‘The matrix structure we all live within is perverse,’ says Schaeken.' The money lies with the institutes, but the programmes don’t always fall one-to-one under them. We have to talk about that configuration and framework as a team, in constructive discussions with programme chairs, academic directors and management teams.'
‘Keep things upbeat’
What does he ultimately hope to achieve? 'That my mailbox is empty on Monday morning. Then I'll either be completely burned out and nobody wants to have anything to do with me, or I'll have arranged it so that everyone can get things done without me. That’s a bit mad, of course, but it suits my management style. I like to keep things upbeat.'
Schaeken’s style is informal: ‘Although I’ve had a lot of management positions, I’ve never learned to write a briefing note or an agenda format, of whatever it’s called. I prefer walking around, seeing people, making personal contact rather than reading an e-mail, especially as academics write their e-mails the same way they write academic articles. I prefer not to work in the evenings either. I realise that it’s easy for me to talk, as a professor at the end of my career, and that these are very difficult times for a university lecturer with a young family, but in the end there’s more to life than science.'