English version below
For de unge forskerne gir en stilling som postdoktor en mulighet til ? komme i gang med en akademisk karriere. Men skal stillingen fungere etter hensikten, m? vi tilby postdoktorene s? gode vilk?r som mulig.
I l?pet av de siste ?rene har fakultetet hatt en rivende utvikling n?r det gjelder eksternt finansiert forskning. Dette har gitt en stor ?kning i antallet postdoktorer. Tallet er n? litt over 100, noe som inneb?rer en dobling over de siste fem ?rene. Dette har gitt forskningsmilj?ene v?re en innspr?ytning av entusiastiske og interessante nye kolleger som kommer til ? kaste av seg langt utover den forskningen disse forskerne selv leverer.
Samtidig inneb?rer den store ?kningen i tallet p? yngre forskere en stor utfordring. Antallet stillinger for fast ansatte ved fakultetet vil enten ikke ?ke fremover eller vil ?ke i liten grad. S? ? legge til rette for planlegging av gode karrierer for v?re unge forskere, enten de skal inn i fremtidige jobber ved Universitetet i Oslo, ved en annen forskningsinstitusjon i inn- eller utland, eller ut i jobber i offentlig eller privat sektor, er viktig.
Universitetets Strategi 2030 la vekt p? ? gi yngre forskere forutsigbare rammer for ? utvikle sine karrierer. Like etter at strategien var vedtatt, kom Universitetsstyret med et sett standarder for karrierest?tte for forskere i tidlig karrierefase. I fjor fulgte fakultetet opp, og dekanen satte ned en arbeidsgruppe som s?rlig s? p? hvordan vi kan st?tte postdoktorenes karriereutvikling. Og n? er ogs? sentrale myndigheter p? banen: 澳门葡京手机版app下载sr?det har for tiden sin plan for rekruttering og tidlig karriere ute p? h?ring.
Hovedhensikten med en postdoktorstilling er ? utvikle en akademisk forskerkarriere. Siden sektoren legger mer vekt p? undervisningserfaringer enn man gjorde tidligere, er det avgj?rende at en postdoktor har undervisningsoppgaver ved siden av forskningen, slik at man kan lage seg en CV som demonstrerer kompetanse innenfor b?de forskning og undervisning. Derfor b?r en postdoktor-stilling normalt lyses ut for 4 ?r, med undervisningsoppgaver i det siste ?ret. Det er enhetene p? fakultetet som utlyser og tilsetter i slike midlertidige stillinger som postdoktor, s? dette er bare en henstilling fra fakultetets side. Men inntrykket v?rt er at de fleste av de 102 postdoktorene vi har i dag, sitter i 4-?rs stillinger.
Enda bedre ville situasjonen v?re dersom 澳门葡京手机版app下载sr?det dekket ogs? undervisningsdelen av en postdoktorstilling, noe de ikke gj?r i dag. For dersom 澳门葡京手机版app下载sr?det ?nsker ? fremme gode forskerkarrierer, b?r de ogs? legge godt til rette for at vi f?r frem gode undervisere. Fakultetets innspill til UiOs h?ringsuttalelse tar opp denne problemstillingen.
Ved siden av arbeidet med ? skaffe postdoktorene undervisningsoppgaver mens de er her, planlegger fakultetet en innsats for ? tilby denne gruppen noen impulser for ? tenke p? en videre karriere som ikke n?dvendigvis ender i akademia. I januar arrangerer vi for f?rste gang en karrieredag for postdoktorer og andre unge forskere. Her vil vi diskutere kommunikasjon i sosiale medier, jungelen av utlysinger ? s?ke p?, og bevissthet om karrierestrategi og tidsbruk. Vi f?r ogs? bes?k av noen av v?re postdok-alumni. Selv om dette bare er et lite bidrag, h?per vi det hjelper p? for ? f? v?re postdoktorer til ? puste litt roligere. Mange av dem har kommet til oss fra utlandet og har oppdaget at Norge er et flott land og Oslo en fin by. Det ville v?re fint b?de for faget og for landet om de dyktige postdoktorene v?re kunne finne seg til rette her ogs? etter postdoktor-perioden hos oss over – selv om det ikke vil v?re faste stillinger ved fakultetet for mange av dem.
P? studiesiden arbeides det ogs? hardt med ? bist? studentene med ? tenke framover underveis i studiel?pet. Vi ?nsker ? tilrettelegge bedre for en kontinuerlig utvikling av studentenes egen tenkning og egne faglige valg basert p? hvor man ?nsker ? v?re, og hva man ?nsker ? jobbe med, etter at man har skaffet seg den kompetansen man er i ferd med ? bygge opp. B?de arbeidslivsrelevans-statistikken fra studiebarometeret, frafalls- og gjennomf?ringstall fra v?re programmer og studentenes tilbakemeldinger i en rekke sammenhenger tyder p? at det er viktig for ? oppleve en st?rre sammenheng mellom det de l?rer underveis i studiet, og det de tenker at de kommer til ? jobbe med etterp?. Dette er ogs? viktig for faglig identitet, l?ringsmilj? og studiemotivasjon.
Karrieresenteret er en viktig 澳门葡京手机版app下载spartner for fakultetets og enhetenes satsninger p? arbeidslivsrelevans. De er med oss i en rekke av v?re tiltak, med tradisjonell individuell og gruppebasert karriereveiledning, men ogs? i utviklingen av stadig mer integrerte tiltak som alumnivirksomhet og praksisemner – og n? sist i oppbygging, implementering og drift av den nylanserte Canvas-forankrede langsg?ende emnerekka ‘Finn din Framtid’. Karrieresenteret er i disse tider under omorganisering. Velferdstinget ved SiO tolker lovverket slik at det er l?restedene selv som skal st? for karrieretjenesten til sine studenter, og planlegger derfor en nedtrapping av sine karrieretjenester. Parallelt med at dette skjer, er UiO n? i tenkeboksen med hensyn til hvordan vi ?nsker at en slik tjeneste skal v?re organisert og dimensjonert, og hva den skal inneholde innenfor rammen av UiO. SV-fakultetet er representert i en sentral arbeidsgruppe som er i ferd med ? utrede behov og foresl? organiseringsmodeller for en slik karrieretjeneste. For oss p? SV-fakultetet er det viktig at vi kan videref?re det gode 澳门葡京手机版app下载et med fagkompetansen p? Karrieresenteret, om enn i omorganisert form. Vi har spilt inn at vi ?nsker denne kompetansen tett p? de som planlegger undervisningen i v?re programmer og emner, og at de kan fortsette ? tilby direkte karriereveiledning og ferdighetstrening for studentene v?re.
Editorial: Career Support All the Way
Careers support is important for both our young researchers and for students.
For young researchers, a postdoctoral fellow position is an opportunity to embark on an academic career. However, we need to offer postdoctoral fellows the best possible conditions if such positions are to work as intended.
The faculty has seen rapid development in recent years as far as externally funded research is concerned. This has resulted in a huge increase in the number of postdoctoral fellows. There are now just over a hundred of them, meaning that their numbers have more than doubled in the last five years. This has provided our research groups with an injection of enthusiastic and interesting new colleagues who will yield far more than just the research these researchers personally deliver.
At the same time, this substantial increase in the number of younger researchers poses a major challenge. The number of permanent staff positions at the faculty will either not grow at all or only increase slightly going forward. Facilitating good career planning for our young researchers is important, irrespective of whether that involves future positions at UiO or some other research institution in Norway or abroad, or indeed positions in the public or private sector.
The university’s Strategy 2030 emphasises the importance of providing a predictable career development framework for younger researchers. Shortly after the strategy was adopted, the University Board issued a set of new career support standards for researchers at an early stage of their careers. The faculty followed this up last year with the dean appointing a working group specifically tasked with looking at how we can support the career development of postdoctoral fellows. Key agencies have now also got involved: the Research Council of Norway is currently inviting comments on its recruitment and early career plan.
The main purpose of a postdoctoral fellow position is to develop a career as an academic researcher. Since the sector now places a greater emphasis on teaching experience than it used to, it is vital that postdoctoral fellows perform teaching duties alongside their research so that they can develop a CV that demonstrates competence in both research and teaching. A postdoctoral fellow position should, therefore, normally be advertised as a four-year contract with teaching duties in the final year. Temporary positions like postdoctoral fellows are advertised and filled by the various units in the faculty, so this is just a suggestion on the part of the faculty. However, our impression is that most of the 102 postdoctoral fellows we currently employ are on four-year contracts.
The situation would be even better if the Research Council also covered the teaching component of a postdoctoral fellow position, which they currently do not do, because if it wants to promote good research careers, it should help ensure we develop good teachers. The faculty’s input to UiO’s statement addresses this issue.
Besides the job of providing postdoctoral fellows with teaching duties while they are with us, the faculty is also planning to offer this group some incentives to think about a future career that does not necessarily end up in academia. We will be holding our first careers day for postdoctoral fellows and other young researchers in January. There will be discussions on communication in social media, the jungle of announcements they can apply for, and being conscious of their career strategy and how they spend their time. Some of our postdoctoral alumni will also be there. Although this is just a small contribution, we hope it will help our postdoctoral fellows breathe a little easier. Many have come to us from abroad and have discovered that Norway is a great country and Oslo a fine city. It would be great, both for the discipline and for the country, if our capable postdoctoral fellows could settle down here once their postdoctoral period with us is over – even though there would not be permanent positions at the faculty for many of them.
As far as the study aspect is concerned, a lot of hard work is being done to help students think about their future during the course of their studies. We want to improve how we help students continuously develop their own thinking and make academic choices based on where they want to get to and what they want to work with once they have acquired the skills they are learning. Work life relevance statistics from the study barometer, drop-out and completion figures from our programmes and student feedback in various contexts all suggest that it is important to see a greater correlation between what students learn during their studies and what they envisage working with afterwards. This is also important for academic identity, the learning environment and study motivation.
The Career Services is an important partner in the work life relevance efforts of the faculty and units. It is involved in a number of our measures, with traditional individual and group-based career guidance, as well as in the development of ever more integrated measures such as alumni activities and supervised professional training seminars, and now, most recently, developing, implementing and operating the newly launched, Canvas-based, longitudinal ‘Discover your Future’ series of courses. The Career Services is currently being reorganised. According to SiO’s Student Welfare Council’s interpretation of the legislation, student career services must be provided by the higher education institutions themselves and, therefore, it is planning to scale back its career services. In parallel with this, UiO is currently considering how we want such a service to be organised and dimensioned, as well as what it should contain within the framework of UiO. The Faculty of Social Sciences is represented in a key working group, which is in the process of assessing needs and proposing potential organisational models for such a career service. We in the Faculty of Social Sciences believe it is important that we can continue our good partnership with the career centre’s experts, albeit in a reorganised form. We have told it that we want its experts to work closely with those who plan the teaching in our programmes and courses, and for them to continue directly offering our students career guidance and skills training.