Foto: Eivind Senneset, UiB
Hello everyone,
Welcome back after the summer holidays. Hope it has been good despite the somewhat miserable weather conditions here in the west.
It’s still a little quiet in the corridors, but next week we have lift off for the start of the semester. Despite our challenges with finances, we are still a place of study that offers committed, high-quality teaching. I am looking forward to meeting the new students next week and I know that they have great expectations of us and all the academic and social activities they will at the start of their studies and on through their student careers.
The autumn semester will be challenging. We are going to carry out the area reduction process, we have job freezes, we still have to reduce spending on operations and teaching assistance. I am completely convinced that we will be able to correct the financial challenges, even if it will take time and be challenging. We have spent a lot of time and effort on reducing and gaining control over our expenses over the past year. It has been absolutely necessary and I feel that we are beginning to gain control. We have to quickly start working even more intensively and purposefully on the income side; through the basic grant and not least through external financing. With as many outstanding professional environments as we have at BIO, combined with a good infrastructure and subject areas that are very relevant to society, I believe that we have good opportunities to increase our income in both of these areas. I look forward to working closely with the professional communities on this.
I am looking forward to the rest of the semester and wish you all a good weekend.
Ørjan
