5 minute read
New Deputy Vice-Chancellor with a lot on his plate.
News Has a long to-do list
– The pandemic led to a fantastic mobilization of employees, who quickly switched to remote working. Now we have to tackle a no less demanding task: to return to normal campus operations while taking advantage of the lessons we have learned, says
HE HAS JUST HAD his first meeting as Chairman of the University Board of Education, which felt a little bit like coming home. – I have been a member of the committee before, during my three years as Associate Dean for Education at the Faculty of Humanities. During that time, I learned quite a lot about the university's educational programmes and strategic work, so even though I am new as Deputy Vice-Chancellor, I am familiar with the issues. Moreover, it is reassuring to have my predecessor Mette Sandoff, who is now Pro-Vice-Chancellor, in the room next door. She has a tremendous amount of experience and knowledge.
EVEN THOUGH HE has only been the Deputy Vice-Chancellor for a few weeks, Pauli Kortteinen already has an entire list of things to deal with. – The University of Gothenburg's new vision shows the direction for the university, which is to be concretized through university-wide goals and strategies. It is clear from the strategy for the period 2021–2024 which activities I, in my capacity of Deputy Vice-Chancellor, am responsible for. One of the things that ends up on my desk is to follow up and take advantage of the many experiences that teachers and other employees have had during the pandemic.
A working group has presented six proposals for projects for development. Project manager Daniel Lundell will develop a plan for how these proposals can be implemented, which will then be discussed in the University Board of Education in December.
– THEY INVOLVE enhancing the digital skills of, among others, managers, teachers and librarians. But also about improving communication and the access points to the University of Gothenburg; many students have stated that during the pandemic it was difficult to find information on the Student Portal and Canvas. Another proposal involves inspiring physical and digital study and learning environments. At some faculties, such as the new Humanist, it is possible to stream lectures and conduct hybrid meetings in virtually all classrooms, but this is not the case everywhere at the university.
The Pedagog 2.0 project entails developing the teachers' skills based on the experience that the pandemic has provided: When are digital meetings best? What activities are better done on campus and how does hybrid teaching work? – We will also investigate user-friendly support for lecturers and other staff and try to find approaches that work throughout the university. Another project involves roles and responsibilities when it comes to IT support for students. For several years, GU has taken digital initiatives through strategic investments in, for example, the INU and DigiKomp projects, but the rapid transition to distance has led many to really discover the various opportunities that new technology offers.
Pauli Kortteinen
Currently: New Deputy Vice-Chancellor for Education. Previous assignments: Associate Dean for Education at the Faculty of Humanities, Head of Department at FLOV (Department of Philosophy, Linguistics and Theory of Science), Head of Department, Director of Studies and Programme Coordinator at FLOV. Lives in: Central Gothenburg. Family: Husband Ronnie Hallgren, theatre director. Hobbies: Cooking and the performing arts (theatre, dance, opera, and musicals).
Currently reading:
Retour à Reims by Didier Eribon, Dolda Gudar – En bok om allt som inte går förlorat i en översättning (Hidden Gods – A book about everything that is not lost in a translation) by Nils Håkansson.
IN THE COMING years, the qualification system will also be developed, so that collaboration and pedagogical skills are valued higher, says Pauli Kortteinen. – Among other things, it involves taking advantage of the skills of our excellent teachers. There are good examples of such work already underway.
The responsibility for broadening recruitment, lifelong learning and contract education also now lies with the Deputy Vice-Chancellor for Education. – Another central strategy in the new vision is of course
Pauli Kortteinen points out that we must learn from the lessons from the pandemic.
internationalization, where EUTOPIA is an example. It is about a university alliance between ten European universities. The collaboration is divided into different work packages where what is about education is led by the Vrije Universiteit Brussel, with GU as co-responsible. The long-term goal is for a student by 2050 to be able to move freely between the participating higher education institutions. A shortterm goal is to start 30 “learning units” by 2022 with teacher teams that collaborate across borders. 18 such units have already been established.
An important part of the internationalization work, which one may not think of, are the courses in Swedish for incoming students and staff that GU offers, Pauli Kortteinen points out. – We like to think that internationalization is only about English. But for incoming staff and students, it is also important to learn Swedish.
The assignment as vice-chancellor is 80 percent. Pauli Kortteinen hopes to be able to devote other time to research in the areas of contrastive linguistics and language typology.
– MY DOCTORAL dissertation was about the use of the Swedish position verbs stå, sitta and ligga (stand, sit, lie) and their French equivalents. In Swedish, position verbs can be used about objects. We can, for example, say ”det ligger en bok på bordet” (there is a book on the table) and ”det står en husbil på parkeringen” (there's a camper in the parking lot). The French direct equivalents can not be used in that way. The survey is based on just over 6,000 occurrences of position verbs in a Swedish-French parallel corpus, which I built with a doctoral student colleague. The corpus consists of original texts in both Swedish and French digitally linked with their respective translations into Swedish and French. – In recent years, I have also become interested in contrastive typological studies of mental attitude verbs, such as the English "think" and the French "penser". These verbs have a number of different Swedish equivalents depending on the context - is it about tro, tycka, tänka, tänka sig, mena (believing, thinking, imagining, meaning) … or maybe something else?
PAULI KORTTEINEN
Text: Eva Lundgren Photo: Johan Wingborg
