- The commotion of last year has resulted in measures being taken by the management team.
- The new degree programme manager Jolling Lodema above all wants to ‘bring back the peace’
After a restless first year it now seems that the degree course social work is back on track. During the last year a lot of restlessness had arisen among the teachers. There were a lot of questions, the management team would have communicated insufficiently and there would have been unnecessary cutting in the number of ‘Docent Belasting Uren, dbu’s (teacher allocation hours), which caused the work pressure of the teachers to rise. By now the management team of the division has compensated the teachers involved financially and has adjusted the new programme of the first year social work.
The new study programme manager, Jolling Lodema, speaks of ‘a more balanced programme’. Unit participation council chair Frank Joustra emphasizes that the programme has to be adjusted ‘in order to have it better associated with the work load’. Joustra: ‘Last year we started with a new ambitious programme but there are limits to the budget, as we noticed last year. So issues have developed surrounding the dbu-systematics. The financial possibilities are limited and thus there has been chosen for adjusting the programme.’
Joustra is happy with the compensation: ‘We have achieved what we wanted to achieve. Along with the adjustment of the new programme it seems that the issues have been resolved with this – but we need to watch out so that the same problems don’t occur during the years to come. This is why we have agreed with the MT that we will have a look at the dbu-systematics at social work together, so that we can come to an agreement for the years to come.
So does this remove all the tension? Joustra: ‘It remains tense. We are starting the second year, which is totally new, but luckily the organisation has ‘landed’ and has chosen a new manager for the study programme social work by now and the return of the coordinators. The MT didn’t want this but we have emphasized that with a study programme this big of a size you can’t go without the ‘intermediate layer’.
Lodema thinks that there was essentially nothing wrong with that decision but that ‘simply too much was happening at the same time. The teams were left on their own too often and in the turmoil they could not find the right way. The return of the coordination team ensures a clearer structure. The coordinators are there for the organisation of the education. The teams are there for the connection to the student, for personal development, taking care of each other.’
What does he see as the challenge for this coming academic year? ‘I think mostly: bringing back the peace. And we started now with the second year, in which the students can choose from three profiles. These profiles are mostly set in stone, but at this point we also need to think about the contents of the third and fourth year. It is a whole new challenge. But the beautiful thing about education is: every year there is a new possibility to improve further.’ (MH)
