Standing as a candidate for the Faculty Council: ‘It’s especially important at the present time’
There are two vacant seats available in the upcoming interim elections for the Faculty Council. What can prospective council members expect? Professor Jos Schaeken, a member of the Faculty Council, explains in more detail.
As a former FGGA Faculty Board member, Dean of Leiden University College and Academic Director of LUCL, it seemed only natural that Schaeken should be a member of the Faculty Council. However, he wasn’t immediately enthusiastic when asked to stand as a candidate last year. ‘Like most people in the faculty, it wasn’t something that instantly attracted me.’
Finger on the pulse
What ultimately persuaded him was the faculty’s financial situation. ‘If we have a financial deficit and painful measures perhaps have to be taken, I want to make sure that their impact on our primary processes of research and education is as low as possible. The best way to do this is to have a seat in the Faculty Council, and be one of the seven people who have to approve the budget.’
Schaeken emphasises the importance of having a good relationship with the Faculty Board. ‘The Faculty Council is sometimes portrayed as an opponent or enemy of the Faculty Board. I prefer to see us as a critical thinking partner, who is interested in the big picture. We keep a finger on the pulse when the Faculty Board makes decisions, because we stand up for our staff and our students.’
The budget at a glance
In concrete terms, this thinking partnership means that in the period ahead Schaeken will be working with a subcommittee to develop a ‘budget at a glance’, as already used by many municipal authorities. ‘Many of the Faculty Council members actually found it difficult to understand the budget at first,’ he says. ‘So you know that people in the faculty are going to just switch off immediately when they see the document, even though it could affect their jobs. On the initiative of two student members, we’re therefore going to translate the whole thing into something that shows you in a couple minutes what it’s all about and what the important points are.’
In the Faculty Council, Schaeken works mainly in Dutch. ‘Partly for legal reasons, many of the documents we deal with in the Faculty Council are in Dutch: the university’s administrative language. The Faculty Council is obviously accessible for colleagues with other native languages, and there are resources such as language buddies, but when you’re working on such complicated subjects, you appreciate being able to resort to the nuances of your own language. We naturally also try to translate as many documents as possible into English.’
If you’d like to stand as a candidate for the vacant seats in the staff section of the Faculty Council, you can submit your application form on 26 and 27 March.