Departing vice-dean Mirjam de Baar: ‘Straight away I found Leiden's Faculty of Humanities a fantastic environment to work in'
After nine years, Mirjam de Baar is leaving as vice-dean of the Faculty of Humanities. ‘It will take some getting used to letting go of this vice-deanship because the education portfolio is very close to my heart and I’ve worked hard for it in recent years in close cooperation with many colleagues.’
In 2015, when Mirjam de Baar had come to the end of her term as vice-dean and programme director of the then Faculty of Theology and Religious Studies in Groningen, she knew for sure: administration would be something she would not do for a while. 'I had just made arrangements to work on my research during my sabbatical,’ she says. However, things turned out differently when she was approached by a recruitment and selection agency asking whether she was interested in the position of vice-dean at the Faculty of Humanities in Leiden.
‘I would have liked to throw myself back into my research, but I also thought it was a pity that I wouldn't then be able to do anything with all the knowledge and experience I’d gained in shaping and implementing educational policy.’ What was decisive in deciding to apply for the vacancy in Leiden after all was the entirely amenable interview with the university's then vice-rector, who was so enthusiastic about education. That made me expect to find a setting in Leiden in which I could take new, interesting steps. And that turned out to be true.’
Ambitions and challenges
'Straight away I found Leiden's Faculty of Humanities a fantastic environment to work in. That's because of the enormous breadth and variety of teaching and research: all those different languages, area studies, history, art history, philosophy and religious studies but also media studies and international relations,' she explains.
‘As a historian, I immediately felt at home in that dynamic environment, and from the start I really enjoyed working with all those passionate colleagues within the programmes and in the faculty office.’
At the same time, it was clear that master's programmes had received little attention in the years before her arrival and that the teaching domain was not easy to manage. So there were also new challenges. ‘We don't have programme directors here, but programme boards, which also include student members,’ says De Baar. 'That in itself is a nice principle, because you place responsibility as low as possible in the organisation. At the same time, even with clustered programme boards, it means you have to deal with 38 programme chairs. The first time I took part in the meeting of the programme chairs, the entire hall in the Gravensteen was full. That did make me wonder for a while how I was going to do this, also because there was a Faculty Strategic Plan with 83 key objectives, plus a new university vision on education with no fewer than eight ambitions.'
Education, research and labour market
Under De Baars' leadership, three ambitions from the vision on education were made priorities: intertwining education and research, job market orientation and skills. ‘We also focused on developing new, two-year educational masters,’ she says. 'Initially, there was a strong feeling in the faculty that these should be embedded with us, not with ICLON. The process even stalled for a while as a result, but eventually we managed to embed them at ICLON in such a way that the cooperation with the faculty was much stronger. That gives all kinds of extra opportunities to create new routes to teaching together, and we had a very successful first audit review last year. That’s one of the many new initiatives where I am proud of having succeeded. But I’m also very happy about the successful audit reviews of all our 51 programmes in 2019-2021. What we have achieved in recent years in terms of educational innovation projects and in the area of diversity and inclusion is also very pleasing. We weren’t doing much about that when I arrived, but under the leadership of our policy officer Aurelie van ’t Slot, we’ve created the JEDI Fund, for example, which funds projects that promote an inclusive learning environment.
‘Of course, the corona period was a very tricky and difficult time when we had to switch to online teaching and online meetings at very short notice. Right in the first week, we had an online meeting in Teams with all the programme chairs. That was exceptional because it allowed us to switch quickly. In those early days, I was also part of the university crisis team, where I was the linking pin to the vice-deans of the other faculties.
‘Within the faculty, I have always made a strong case for a better connection between master's education and the labour market and, for that reason, I also worked on the development of alumni policy and job market orientation. Educational innovation is also very important to keep our teaching attractive for future generations of students. Of course we want to retain the expertise we have as much as possible, but if students' interests shift, you have to respond to that. That's why there are now great new initiatives for a master's in Environmental Humanities and two interdisciplinary master's tracks Play & Games Studies and Digital Media & Society.'
Difficult time to leave
Further development of those new master’s and master’s tracks will fall to De Baar’s successor Jos Schaeken.
‘It’s tough leaving at a time when the financial situation is so difficult for many employees, knowing that there are still cuts coming from The Hague and that we are also going to feel the effects of the Internationalisation in Balance Act,’ says De Baar. 'I’m glad that the introduction of the programme standards has given us a set of tools that programmes can use to make their courses more efficient, but the new board will still have major dilemmas to face. I myself notice that I haven’t yet let go of those dilemmas. Sometimes at night I suddenly think: what about this dossier and shouldn't something still be done with it?'
When her board term ends, the first thing she is planning is therefore a walking holiday to ‘work off the adrenaline’. That will be followed, nine years later than originally intended, by another year to focus fully on her research. De Baar: ‘I’m very curious how I will find it being thrown back on myself, doing research in the archives on my own again. As vice-dean MA, you actually share a job with the vice-dean BA, which means you always have a sparring partner. I’ve been fortunate that this cooperation with both the other vice-deans, first Egbert Fortuin and then Jeroen Touwen, has always been incredibly good and pleasant, just as with the rest of the board and all the other colleagues. I already know that I will miss them tremendously.'