In 2021, Sijbrand de Jong began his tenure as dean at the Faculty of Science, succeeding Lutgarde Buydens. By then, he had already accumulated considerable administrative experience, both within and outside the faculty. He was the first director of the IMAPP research institute and the founder of PUC of Science. Additionally, he served on the board of directors of FOM (Foundation for Fundamental Research on Matter) and was president of the CERN Council in Geneva for three years.
The faculty was already familiar territory for De Jong: he has been affiliated with the Faculty of Science as Professor of Experimental Physics since 1998. At the time, he considered the move to dean an honour: "We're playing in the vanguard of education and research, and I see good opportunities to further increase our impact." How has he found his first term?
From abundance to cutbacks
De Jong: "The start of my first term was somewhat atypical, coming in the tail end of the coronavirus pandemic. That made it harder to get up to speed quickly and to get to know my new colleagues. But when we emerged from coronavirus, the faculty was actually doing very well. We even had to pull out all the stops to recruit enough people and spend the money that the government of the day had made available. That changed about eighteen months ago: a different government, substantial cuts to higher education and research. We had to put the brakes on spending. That was naturally a great shock at first. The consequences are still rather unpleasant, but we are seeing that our measures are having an effect—even more than we had anticipated. We're not in as poor a position as before: perhaps the recruitment freeze will be sufficient to avoid further cuts to education and research."
Getting a grip on the situation
"The column reviews of professional services are, however, still in full swing. Unfortunately, as a faculty board, we only have partial control over what the Executive Board decides in this regard. I'm a micromanager—I want to have everything under control—so I find it difficult to deal with. All the more so because professional services are essential for conducting research and education properly. As a faculty board, we're trying to exercise as much control over the situation as possible, so that the column reviews proceed as positively as possible."
A new funding model
"I have various objectives for my coming term. From the very start of my deanship, I've wanted to move towards a new funding model. In the current model, it's difficult to make a good connection at a strategic level. You can't easily see: if we decide not to do X, what does that mean financially? That's why we're now working hard to have a different system in place for the 2027 budget. No longer starting from: how do we distribute our money amongst everyone? But rather: starting from our objectives—what do we want to achieve with our education and research? If we have a sound financial picture to accompany that, we can make better-founded, strategic choices."
Strategic themes
"The university strategy fits well with what we do as a faculty. Brain research is a theme we're fully committed to, as are Values-Driven AI and digitalisation. Space and matter encompasses roughly everything we do. In the theme of Sustainable Health, we naturally have the research from RIMLS, but also research from IMM, such as drug research or biomarker research. And within the theme of Inequality and Emancipation, one could also include science emancipation. In my view, it's important that everyone knows something about technology and natural sciences, because these play a major role in society. That's what we're working towards through the teacher training programme, outreach and citizen science. The teacher training programme isn't solely about training teachers who prepare our students. A large proportion of those teachers will educate children who largely won't pursue science, but who will nonetheless acquire the knowledge to function in society."
The faculty as a community
"Additionally, I would naturally like us to remain successful in education and research, but I think that will be fine. Where I would like to see us develop further as a faculty is in our faculty as a community. That we have even more of a team feeling, a family feeling. With an open culture in which you can address one another, about both positive and negative matters, without immediately feeling personally attacked.
I think it's tremendously important that we occasionally pay each other compliments. That's what we try to do with the Faculty Meet Up, of course: celebrating successes together. When something goes well, we should certainly acknowledge it. And the things that perhaps aren't going quite as well should also be acknowledged. Not from the perspective of: what have you gone and done now, but rather: right, this isn't running smoothly yet—how are we all going to ensure it improves?"
Interdisciplinary
"Ideally, I'd like to work with mixed teams even more. For instance, that the management teams of the institutes don't consist solely of the managing director, the director and the occasional scientist, but also include people from Finance & Control, HR and communications, for example. I keep raising this in the context of the column review. Central management can be perfectly fine, but for us it's precisely so tremendously important to have those multidisciplinary teams to achieve your objectives.
It's not the scientist alone who scores the success. That scientist can be successful because they have support from colleagues. Of course that scientist is tremendously important, but they can't manage it alone either.'
Valhalla
"In short, what I see as a sort of Valhalla is that we're an ambitious and pleasant place to work and study. And that that is the reason for good people to come here. Then you get the upward spiral. Plenty of challenges for my second term as dean. I'm looking forward to it!"