The faculty's strategic direction is based on AU's strategy for the period 2020-2025, and it comprises a core narrative describing who Natural Sciences is as a faculty, as well as four strategic focus areas that the faculty wants to prioritise in the years to come.
The strategic milestones give the faculty a clear direction in its work to generate new knowledge and new research breakthroughs, and to help solve current societal challenges through high-quality research and education.
Four strategic focus areas have been set up to supplement the initiatives being launched in continuation of Aarhus University's strategy.
The right framework conditions and incentives are prerequisites for high-quality education and research, interdisciplinary collaboration and collaboration with businesses. Therefore, we will:
Strengthen internal collaboration (at Nat and with other faculties) on education and research - based on strong core disciplines.
Promote interdisciplinary collaboration – through developing existing interdisciplinary initiatives, supporting new, bottom-up initiatives, and by establishing new, externally financed, strategic centres.
Develop an overall vision for education at the faculty.
Intensify collaboration between the faculty (staff/students), public institutions, NGOs and companies.
Enhance the work environment and continue to develop attractive physical facilities for students and staff, including developing the research infrastructure strategically.
Be a visible and attractive faculty with a clear profile, both nationally and internationally.
Make the faculty's administrative support even more coherent and user-driven, so that all staff can work together to develop core tasks.
Targeted career development for students and staff at all levels is a prerequisite for realising potentials for the individual and for the faculty. Therefore, we will:
Make career steps and requirements clear and transparent for students and staff, with clear and familiar opportunities for progression and development.
Be recognised as a place at which the research leaders of tomorrow can commence and develop their careers.
Enhance diversity, including achieve a significantly better gender balance in recruitment processes and thereby within the staff group.
Ensure that all students and researchers employed in temporary positions know about their career opportunities, including in the private and public sectors and in academia.
Targeted recruitment of staff is a prerequisite for ensuring high quality and diversity in the faculty's educational and research environments. Therefore, we will ensure that:
We are internationally competitive, so that we are able to attract the best-qualified individuals.
Recruitment processes support diversity and recruitment of the best-qualified individuals.
A research career at the faculty is recognised as an attractive career path both within and outside the faculty.
Profile Aarhus city, our campus, and the Danish welfare system, including a good work-life balance, actively and as an integral element in recruitment of staff and students.
Nat will strengthen student recruitment by:
Raising curiosity and interest in science among children and young people.
Increasing the number of qualified applicants per student place.
Improving students' transition to the faculty's degree programmes and increasing retention and completion rates.
Targeted recruitment of staff is a prerequisite for ensuring high quality and diversity in the faculty's educational and research environments. Therefore, we will ensure that:
We are internationally competitive, so that we are able to attract the best-qualified individuals.
Recruitment processes support diversity and recruitment of the best-qualified individuals.
A research career at the faculty is recognised as an attractive career path both within and outside the faculty.
Profile Aarhus city, our campus, and the Danish welfare system, including a good work-life balance, actively and as an integral element in recruitment of staff and students.
Nat will strengthen student recruitment by:
Raising curiosity and interest in science among children and young people.
Increasing the number of qualified applicants per student place.
Improving students' transition to the faculty's degree programmes and increasing retention and completion rates.
The core narrative frames the spirit of the Faculty of Natural Sciences and ensures a clear standpoint in work to forge the pioneering initiatives of the future.
The faculty's strengths are clearly highlighted in its core narrative: The faculty's good research activities, its flat structure, interdisciplinary research, good collaboration across departments and faculties, basic research of the highest quality, high-quality study programmes, students' opportunities to get involved in research, and much more.
