Dr/THS

We are delighted to bring you the long-awaited result of the 2020 inaugural Supervisor of the Year Award! As you probably already know, this is an award that the PhD Chapter of THS launched for the first time this academic year, in order to highlight exemplary supervision practices in Third Cycle Education at KTH.

Overall, we received 65 nominations. An independent jury of PhD students, in which all five schools were represented, has just finished evaluating the nominations.
Without further delay, the winner of the first edition of the Supervisor of the year award, is… Professor György Dán!
Professor György Dán works at the division of network and systems engineering and has exemplified tremendous commitment as a supervisor of his doctoral students.
He will be awarded a diploma and a trophy that will have his name inscribed, and which will be passed on from one winner to the next.

Given the large pool of incredible candidates, it was without doubt a difficult task to select just one winner. We would like to stress our gratitude for the outstanding dedication of all nominees for their doctoral students, and, not less importantly, for the students that nominated their supervisors! They are all winners.

Thank you for staying tuned and helping us improve doctoral education!

The PhD Chapter board welcomes the members of the PhD Chapter to the third Chapter Meeting of the operational year 2020/2021, which will take place over Zoom on March 8th, 2021, at 17:17. Please find the meeting summons here.

Motions to be presented at the Chapter meeting may be submitted to board@dr.kth.se until March 1st, 2021. The meeting agenda will be posted here at least four working days prior to the meeting.

We will hold by-elections for vacant PhD Chapter Board and Functionary positions. For the board positions, we currently have vacancies for the roles of Webmaster and Communication Manager. For the functionary positions, we currently have vacancies for the Nominating Committee, Master of Ceremonies, and Head of Women’s Doctoral Committee (WOP). Work descriptions of all PhD Chapter positions can be found here. Note that PhD Chapter Board Members are eligible to receive time compensation for their work, which count as commission of trust assignments.

If any of the the vacant positions may be of interest to you or someone you know, don’t hesitate to send in your application or nominations here.

All doctoral students are welcome to join the Chapter Meeting, but note that you must be a PhD Chapter Member (that is, a doctoral student and paid member of THS, the KTH Student Union) in order to have voting rights during the meeting. Please fill out this registration form if would like to attend the meeting. We will send a reminder email with the Zoom link to all registered participants.

The deadline for the nominations for supervisor of the year award was on 4th of December 2020. The jury received 64 nominations made by 116 doctoral students and alumni. Note that our rules allow alumni participation up to 1 year after graduation or defending the doctoral thesis. One nomination was withdrawn. The statistics from each school is given below.

The jury shall now work to determine the validity of nominations using the data from KTH. Since only doctoral supervisors are allowed to be nominated, hence the jury shall only allow supervisors listed in the ISP to be eligible to be nominated. The nominated supervisors must be listed in sections 4.1 and 4.2 of the ISP, that is Principal supervisor or Assistant supervisor. Note: Person(s) listed in 4.4 of the ISP (Additional persons) are not eligible to be nominated.

This blog was posted by Mohit Daga, Chairperson of the Supervisor of the Award Jury for the academic year 2020-21.

KTH has many international doctoral students, many of them are even foreign to the idea of education influence by students. Often there are gaps in understanding the system. Doctoral students are represented in almost all central level forums. The structure of these forums changes over time. At the moment, the main forums include the faculty council, the board of education, the employment board, the council of strategic affairs, and the university board. Similarly, doctoral students are represented at the important decision-making bodies of the five different schools of KTH. Through this blog post, I will give a three-step process from my understanding of how to influence education at KTH.

Background: Swedish Laws

The Swedish laws on education are very supportive of student influence. I would further go on to add that one of the most supportive clauses for student influence ever written on a piece of paper exists in Swedish laws.

The students shall have the right to exert influence over education at the universities. The universities shall work to ensure that the students take an active part in the work to further their education.

The above clause has two parts, first, the students have the right to influence, and second, the universities need to make sure that students can actively exercise this right. The question often arises, what are the ways in which students can appropriately use these rights. It is one aspect to be a passive representative in a board/committee/workgroup and another to actively influence decisions using the rights.

Three Step Model

I present a three-step model for active student engagement to change the policies. This should be done by deliberation within the student body and picking policies of importance. Once, you have decided on your set of issues, you could follow the three-step process.

• Actively influence the agenda. It is the most important step. If your issue is not brought into the agenda, it will never be discussed. To bring the issue to the agenda, raise it in the preparatory meeting or the other questions point (often the last point of the agenda) to be included in the next meeting’s agenda.

• Formation of workgroup. Once the issue is included in the agenda, actively inform the meeting regarding the issue. If no decision could be made, suggest the formation of a work-group (be prepared before-hand about the names). In the workgroup, discuss the policy matter and suggest changes/new addition be brought.

• The decision by the board. Once the workgroup provides its recommendations the respective board shall decide on the policy. Be prepared for different kinds of questions that could be raised. One must not take the questions or remarks against the suggested policy negatively but instead on a positive note. If the board decides to accept the policy measure, then it’s a win-win situation. If it rejects, suggest the policy matter to be returned to the work-group.

What student representatives should not do?

Student representatives should only exercise the interest of students. They must not let anyone else’s interest be exercised by renting their shoulders; even if the matter is presented and molded in a way to masquerade as students’ interest. One needs to be watchful. It must be said, that this is not a very Swedish style, so such issues will be rare. Also, student representatives should not be pedantic and raise unnecessary doubts on the matters discussed. Instead, they must find a balance.

This blog was posted by Mohit Daga, Vice-Chairperson of DR for the year 2020.

The PhD Chapter board welcomes the members of the PhD Chapter to the second Chapter Meeting of the operational year 2020/2021, which will take place on December 9th, 2020, at 17:17. Please find the summon here. Due to the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic and associated restrictions, the meeting will take place over Zoom. Highlights of the meeting will include elections for several positions and presentations of the board report and audit report of last year’s (2019-2020) board.

All doctoral students are welcome to join, but note that you must be a PhD Chapter Member (that is, a doctoral student and paid member of THS, the KTH Student Union) in order to have voting rights during the meeting. Please fill out this registration form if would like to attend the meeting: https://forms.gle/8sx3pFodShoh36Me9. We will send a reminder email with the Zoom link to all registered participants.