Greetings from the Department – 12.1.2024

Well, we are already well into the new semester and the students have applied for the various courses we will be teaching now in the spring semester. The course-in-charges have already drawn up detailed timetables and organized the teaching with contributions from the various lecturers in order to gain breadth and academic depth. In total, 39 courses will be taught this spring semester and there is a large solitaire that will be in place these days at the beginning of the semester. After a short pep talk with Beate, it turns out that BIO has a total of around 600 students who will take courses with us this semester. This is spread over approximately 300 bachelor’s students, 127 master’s students, 109 students on professional studies in fish health and 88 students on siv.ing. study in aquaculture. More than half of the courses have more applicants than there is room for. And on Monday the final allocation of places will probably be ready in Mitt UiB. So even though many students disappear at bachelor’s level, we have a large number who will be taught, mentored and who will be given the opportunity to try out as researchers. To get all this in place, a huge amount of work is done, not least from the study section, the lecturers and course assistants.

For the Environmental and aquaculture biology group, 2024 will be a very exciting year, where the entire group will be co-localized on the 3rd floor of the BIO block. We do not know exactly when this will happen, but it will only be after NORCE has moved to the 5th floor of the BIO block. Parts of NORCE have already moved to their premises in Nygårdsporten after being co-located with us for almost 10 years in connection with the joint SFI project CtrlAqua. Many of our students and staff have had access to and good use of their instrumentation through a shared use of the instruments found on the 3rd floor of the BIO block. Now many of these instruments are being moved to Nygårdsporten and we have a big task ahead of us in trying to find funds for and replace this instrumentation, in order to get the laboratories up and running in a satisfactory manner

Ha en riktig god helg!

Mvh Jon Vidar

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Jon Vidar Helvik

Faggruppeleder Miljø- og havbruksbiologi