Verena Schmid Bagdasarjanz

In March the Executive Board launched "ETH 2020", an ambitious program to shape the future, which builds on the present-day success of ETH Zurich. From a position of strength, it now intends to initiate the steps needed to enable it to meet successfully the challenges of the intensifying global competition in higher education. To achieve this, and taking into account and acknowledging the extensive expressions of opinion, it gave first priority to four areas to be dealt with further: “Quality of Teaching”, “ETH Graduate School”, "International Strategy" and "Organisation". The Executive Board identified the areas of “Promoting Young Talent”, “Internal Allocation of Funds”, “Recruiting Outside Funding”, “Technology Transfer” and “Communications Policy” as part-projects with second priority.

Quality of teaching

The fact that the teaching needs continuous further development was also undisputed in the numerous opinions about “ETH 2020”. In this respect, the central point for the Executive Board is that the activities started during the Bologna Process are carried forward, and that this takes place based on the E-Learning Strategy, a Filep project commissioned by the Study Committee, and the evaluation of the examination forms. ETH Rector Konrad Osterwalder will direct the “Teaching Quality” part-project in this sense, and will also include aspects such as English as a teaching language and the definition of the qualities of graduates.

ETH Graduate Schools

ETH intends to promote top-class international young talent more specifically. Graduate Schools for the whole of ETH will be introduced for this purpose. These training programs build on a first academic degree qualification and comprise the master’s and doctorate levels. The documents already prepared by the "Graduate Schools" work group will be incorporated in this project. Additional aspects such as financing models and opportunities for uniform remuneration of doctoral students are to be examined.

International strategy

The international image of ETH Zurich will become increasingly important in the intensifying global competition in higher education. The Executive Board gave the Vice-President for Planning and Logistics the task of developing an international strategy which is based on the draft paper “ETH Zurich International, Internationalisation Strategy" and is intended to cover subjects such as tuition fees and student grants, living accommodation and the expansion of Corporate Communications by adding a marketing unit.

"ETH 2020": The executive Board has decided on various measures intended to contribute to ensuring that ETH remains at the forefront in the global knowledge competition in the future as well.

Organisation

The subject of organisation triggered the biggest controversy among the opinions expressed. The Executive Board stressed once more the importance of an appropriate organisation structure – based on the model of comparable universities such as UC Berkeley, Caltech, MIT or Imperial College – to achieve the objectives expressed in the reform program. The changes centre on redefining the role of the Heads of Department, which is at present difficult and to some extent unclear. The stronger integration of the teaching and research units into the strategic and operational management of the core business of ETH Zurich also has priority.

To this end, the Executive Board decided on the following organisational adjustments:

The academic core business is to be dealt with in a new committee comprising the heads of the teaching and research units together with the President and the Vice-president for Teaching and Research. To enable more intensive collaboration, the number of teaching and research units with full-time headships and increased autonomy is to be restricted to a maximum of eight. The constitutional process should take place bottom-up as far as possible and should be completed by January 2009. The decision on the appointment of new professors remains reserved to the President. The new body will be able to exert considerable influence on the preparation for the decision-making.

The new Executive Board is to consist of the President, the Vice-president for Teaching and Research, the Vice-president for Knowledge and Technology Transfer, the Vice-president for International Relations, the Vice-president for Finance and Controlling and the Vice-president for Infrastructure Management. These descriptions are provisional titles. In addition to the Vice-president for Teaching and Research, the plan is that the Vice-presidents for Knowledge and Technology Transfer and for International Relations will also be recruited from the ranks of the professors. The reorganisation of the Executive Board is to be complete by August 2007.

The dialogue will continue

The decisions by the Executive Board now conclude the first phase of "ETH 2020". The Executive Board is encouraging the discussion and interest in the process, which has so far been wide-ranging and soundly based, with the aim of continuing the implementation of "ETH 2020" in a constant internal dialogue, thus leading to a shared success.