The faculty day is fast approaching: June 13th where you can “Meet the best!”

Søren Falch’s junior and senior prize will be awarded and the Falch lecture 2019 is held by  Professor Maiken Nedergaard, University of Copenhagen who has conducted exciting translational brain research, including underpinning the importance of the glymphatic system and sleep for brain health!

More awards to be handed out: this year’s publication, this year’s PhD, this year’s research group, prizes for internationalization, outstanding dissemination and teaching. K2 has previously received several prizes, which K2s are being honored this year?

And apropos teaching; since the faculty promotes the new title of “Excellent teacher” (which will actually lead to a salary increase!), here are some career planning tips:

Complete the basic module in pedagogy that was scheduled within two years of hiring in your main UiB position (and finish the compulsory written task/paper), anyone else but me who feel hit by the time-squeeze….?)

Remember to record consecutively in your teaching-portifolio any teaching activites you are contributing to, including teaching administration activities (student rounds, skill sessions, preparing written materials, semester boards, creating quizzes, preparing /evaluating exams), retrospective registration will often lead to missing bits..

Something else however still related to teaching: bioinformatics. This is an increasingly important part of much of our activity; with different “-omics”, both understanding and practical use of different computer science methods are required when we have large datasets with eg genetic data or “big-data” in general. K2 has employed an “own” bioinformatician: Anagha Joshi, but as per. today we have not implemented any structured bioinformatic teaching in our study programs. CBU; Computational Biology Unit runs interdisciplinary (informatics / mathematics / chemistry / biology) research and teaching at various study programs/levels and has initiated a joint call to identify what might be coordinated bioinformatic teaching also in medicine/pharmacy (our study programs).

Can our students benefit from existing courses, for example during elective periods or research-line students/PhD students during other parts of the terms? Is there a need for postgraduate courses in relation to your research/subject area?

Anaghi and I are interested in input that we will convey further. Anaghi will gladly contribute to developing courses, but we want to avoid duplication with already existing courses and rather promote courses “across” study-diciplines.

It has now been two months since our conference at Solstrand, and since then I have gathered all your input from the group work on K2s strategy plan.

All your suggestions amounted to four pages of suggestions on what we should keep from our current plan, and what new goals and measures should be included in our new plan. Among other things, your suggestions were a separate goal on innovation at K2 as well as environmental goals and a green strategy. According to your input, we are still in want of meeting places across internal groupings, and career planning for our younger researchers. I am very grateful for your group work at Solstrand and your good input to the new strategy plan.

The new plan will act for three years from 2020 and part of the leader group at K2 will be involved in editing the existing plan. A draft for the new strategy plan will be distributed to all you after the summer. I hope you will take the time both to read and comment when I send it to you.

Best,
Julie

Last week, the Institute had a dialogue meeting with the medical faculty about the research education at the institute. It turns out that there is a minority of fellows who complete their doctorate within 4 years (36%), while a little more than half complete within 6 years (55%). K2 is thus below the average at the medical faculty, which is 65% (by the way, the target number of the Ministry of Education and Research is 80%). No one can say a lot about the reasons or what is more important, to finish the thesis within a given time frame or to deliver a work of good quality. But we do see that there are some fellows who struggle to finish their PhD.

It is always difficult to predict the results of experiments or clinical trials, but it is possible to make life at the end of the PhD period considerably less stressful if you start planning mandatory courses and dissemination points well in time. For example, MEDMET1 (Basic Course in Medical and Health Related Research) is one of the courses that is compulsory for all PhD fellows at the Faculty of Medicine, and it should be taken at the very beginning of the doctoral thesis to have some benefit. For those unfamiliar with MEDMET1, the purpose of the course is to provide an overview of the various stages of the research process including formulating a research question to be addressed, data collection, analysis methods, written and oral presentation of research data as well as research ethics. The course is given every semester. K2 also offers 8 different researcher courses under the umbrella of the two research schools at K2 (Research School in Clinical Medicine and Bergen Research School in Inflammation). Also the mid-term evaluation is compulsory and can be a good control checkpoint if one is on track with the project, and a possibility to ask for help. And remember that one can always contact Irene Hjelmås or me if there is anything one needs help with.

Last deadline for submitting your thesis before summer is set to 21.6., after that, the institute cannot guarantee that everyone who needs to sign anything is in place.

Lastly, I just want to mention that there will be a K2 PhD retreat also this year which I strongly recommend to participate in, not only to get to know your fellow PhD candidates, but not least for the feeling of not standing in everything alone, so stay tuned for more information!

I wish everyone a happy May 17!

As is well known, K2 and K1 have a joint student administration. May 7, we had the annual Teaching Day. Although the attendance was good, it could certainly have been even better. I ask that more people set aside the next day – because the program was important and useful.

Eirik Søfteland (K1) first informed about how OSCE (objective structured clinical exam) in 2018 for the 6th semester was organized and implemented. Well over 300 people were involved in it. Although the OSCE day itself was a logistical challenge to complete both the practical and theoretical evaluation of all the students on the same day, it was without doubt the planning of this which was the biggest challenge. And it actually went smoothly without any special problems! A big thank you to everyone, especially the “OSCE General” Ketil Grong (K2) and Eirik Søfteland (K1).

Responsible for the implementation of this year’s OSCE for the 12th semester is Rune Nielsen (K2). He explained the plans. The date is Thursday, June 6th. This date, all K2 employees must in principle set aside in case they are needed for the implementation of this year’s OSCE. In any case, more examiners are needed. I participated as examinator last year and it was interesting, exciting, and fun. Come on: ask not what K2 can do for you, ask what you can do for K2!

Dean of Teaching Steinar Hunskår informed about the proposed qualification scheme for Outstanding Teachers and how K2 can implement this. In the future, there will be more focus on documented teaching – not just quantity but also quality. Everyone with an academic position must build up a teaching portfolio. Collect documentation about eg. invited lectures, presentations at meetings and seminars, lectures and group teaching, organization of teaching, and others’ evaluation of your efforts. The proposed accreditation scheme will, according to given criteria, designate people who excel especially for the title of Outstanding Teachers. In addition to their status, they will be provided with higher salaries. The proposal is now for review at the Departments. Be active and share your opinion on this matter! Send input directly to Julie Stavnes.

After lunch, Jone Trovik, Ingfrid Salvesen Haldorsen (K1) and Hans Kristian Flaatten (K1) demonstrated team-based learning (TBL). Participants on the Teaching Day were divided into groups for a TBL session where we used Socrative and at the same time learned multiple choice assignments. This was practical and very useful, and at least I learned a lot that I did not know before. A practical limitation on Socrative is that the free version can involve a maximum of 50 students. We are now investigating whether it is possible to purchase a common license for all teachers at K2 and K1 and where one can involve up to 150 students.

This year’s Teaching Award went to Bjørg Tilde Svanes Fevang (K2) and Anders Molven (K1). Congratulations to both – well deserved! In addition to honour and glory, the K2 Teaching Award comes with NOK 50.000.

A big thank you to the Vice Directors Jone Trovik and Ingfrid Salvesen Haldorsen (K1) for a well-executed teaching day. I certainly look forward to next time!