Newsletter 65 from the Head of Department

INTERNAL AT THE DEPARTMENT

The canteen gets "a facelift"
As many of you have probably heard, Compass Group takes over the lease and operation of the canteen at the Department/University from 1 September. But that's not the only change we're going to experience. The painters have been busy tinting some of the walls in more atmospheric colours, and during the autumn we will also get a "coffee station" from Espresso House, so that by polite self-service and payment we can fill up with quality coffee in several varieties. A small part of the canteen will also be fitted out as a lounge environment with new lounge furniture. Together with the Department's working group, Compass Group also has thoughts about organizing tables and chairs in a slightly different way and hanging new pictures on the walls.

Head of Secretariat Jan Ulrik Rasmussen is our representative of the canteen project - please contact him if you have good ideas for - what feels like - the new canteen.

Heimdal: On September 17, a new security measure will be installed on our employee computers
Today, as employees at Aarhus University, we have free access to install, change and update programs on the work computer. This makes the computer vulnerable to cyber-attacks, data theft and hacking.

So, to protect sensitive research data and increase general security, we must henceforth manually activate the computer's local administrative rights when we want to make installations and changes. Activating the rights is simple and is done via the security program Heimdal Security, which will be automatically installed on our computers on Tuesday, September 17, 2024. It requires a manual restart of the computer before the Heimdal security program becomes visible.

On the university's employee website there is more about Heimdal, and it is also described how to approve the installation of programs on the computer.

Inclusive language – avoid subject- and university-specific abbreviations
For those in the know, subject and university abbreviations are an easy and quick way to communicate, but for new employees and others who are not familiar with the meaning, the abbreviations can be experienced as exclusionary and create both misunderstandings and frustration.

As part of the Faculty of Health's ambition to create more inclusive communication in the organisation, the faculty management have adopted a new set of guidelines which limit the use of subject- and university-specific abbreviations both in writing and in speech. This basically means that we:

• do not abbreviate our faculty name Health, which is currently often seen abbreviated HE
• avoid subject- and university-specific abbreviations such as LSU, instead we write lokalt samarbejdsudvalg/local liaison committee
• can still use standard abbreviations for commonly used expressions, for example e.g.

Let us practice that, both when we write and speak. I think it is important that we do not let students, colleagues and partners, internal and external, off the hook by making tribal detours in the language that we carry into various contexts.

The guidelines for inclusive communication are on the Faculty of Health's website. 

Changed parking conditions in the University Park from 3-19 September
When Denmark's Biggest Friday Bar and Sports Day takes place on Friday 13 September, parts of the University Park, including some of the car parks, will be blocked off both before and after the event, and this may have an impact on those of you who come by car.

On the employee page there is a map of which areas and car parks are closed and during which time periods. The changes will come into effect in some places already from 3 September.

Updated guidelines: Avoid doubts about impartiality
Aarhus University has updated the guidelines for close personal relationships in the workplace, and as something new, the guidelines now also deal with close relationships between students and employees. The guidelines for close relationships are on Aarhus University's staff page - as a general rule, it applies that:

• A leader must not employ a close personal relationship in own area of ​​responsibility and line of leadership.
• An employee cannot be course manager/team instructor/examiner and/or supervisor for a student/PhD student with whom the employee has a close personal relationship.
• Peer colleagues who start a relationship or have a close personal relationship are not obliged to inform their manager about this, but it is recommended, as it may give rise to doubts about impartiality. The same applies to a close personal relationship between employee and leader without direct personnel responsibility.
• If, as an employee, you have doubts about your impartiality in your general employment relationship or in a specific case, the immediate leader must be informed, and it is the leader who decides whether a close personal relationship is an obstacle to a work task.

If you are in doubt about how you should act in a specific situation, or if you have questions about the guidelines, you are welcome to contact your immediate leader or our HR partner Annett Bülow Højgaard.

Sideline employment in a high-threat country
To protect both employees, knowledge and critical infrastructure, Aarhus University has per 1 June 2024 introduced stricter guidelines for sideline employment in relation to so-called high-threat countries. This means that you must now inform me as Head of Department in advance if you have plans for a sideline employment in Iran, China or Russia.

If you are in doubt about which types of sideline employment are covered by the guidelines, help is available on the university's employee website. Here you will also find detailed instructions on how to register all sideline employments in Pure.

Read more in the article: Notify your Head of Department: Do you have sideline employment in a high-threat country?, where Vice-Dean for Research Per Brøndsted Höllsberg explains the background for the tightened guidelines.

RESEARCH, EDUCATION AND TEACHING

The Aarhus Model of Dental Education: Joint bachelor’s clinic begins from autumn 2024
One of the cornerstones of "The Aarhus Model of Dental Education" is increased collaboration across the education programs, and from the autumn semester 2024 we will also implement the clinical part, because here all our three bachelor's programs will be in the clinic on the same floor - the 'bachelor's clinic' will be located on the 3rd floor, where we have 82 dental units.

The timing is absolutely right, because from the autumn of 2024, two years of the professional bachelor's programs in dental hygiene and clinical dental technology as well as all (three) years of the bachelor's degree in odontology are transferred to the new curricula. The master's students in dentistry are gathered in a 'master’s clinic' on the 2nd floor. The process has also given us the opportunity to optimize the utilization of our dental units.

The establishment of the bachelor's clinic and the master's clinic will not only be important for our students, but also for you as employees. The dental nurses and the clinical teachers in particular will experience changes. Therefore, they have been involved in the process, just as the Department's local liaison committee and semester forum (student representatives from all semesters on all the programmes) have also been.

More Aarhus Model of Dental Education: The development of new, interdisciplinary electives is well under way
New electives have been developed across our educational programmes. Education coordinator Helle Hornhaver has introduced the new electives for our dental students, and from autumn 2025 they will be offered for all our bachelor's programmes.

One of the joint electives is "The digital dental clinic", which Associate Professor Ruben Pauwels oversees. Another course is "Sustainability in the dental clinic", which Helle Hornhaver has planned in collaboration with two external lecturers, who are both Sustainability Engineers within the dental industry. It also draws threads to the European university collaboration on sustainability, which we are engaged in via the Circle U. collaboration.

In the article "Sustainability course prepares students for greener dental clinics" Helle Hornhaver tells more about this elective.

Many pieces in The Aarhus Model of Dental Education are now starting to fall into place, and it is exciting. Once again, a big thank you to all of you for the innovative educational developments.

Emilie Leth Rasmussen is our new ambassador for pedagogy and didactics
Postdoc at the Section for Oral Ecology Emilie Leth Rasmussen is the Department's new ambassador for pedagogical and didactic development and will help ensure that we continue to teach at a high university pedagogical professional level. As an ambassador, Emilie will be at the forefront of our educational competence development efforts and take care of guidance tasks for both students and teachers on all our programmes. Emilie will defend her PhD from the Centre for Educational Development in the autumn with a focus on curriculum development and learning tools within dental education. Reach out to Emilie and make use of the ambassador function and the great skills we now have in the house.

NEWS ABOUT NAMES

Professor Vibeke Bælum is retiring
From 31 August 2024, Professor of Oral Epidemiology and Public Health Vibeke Bælum will retire and become professor emerita. A huge thank you and the deepest respect for your professionalism and quality in research over 41 years as a researcher and teacher at Aarhus University. Your research and knowledge sharing are of crucial importance for the qualification of how we should perform our dental profession and how we should organize our healthcare system and society.

That's how Alberte Kjær Pedersen went at the Olympics in Paris
The triathlete and dental student, Alberte Kjær Pedersen, made her debut at the Olympic Games in Paris in the women's triathlon competition. She finished in 36th place with a combined time of 2 hours and 2 minutes after swimming, cycling and running through Paris. And she was both happy and proud of that, she says in this interview on Eurosport [in Danish], where she also explains that it was the current in the Seine and not the bacteria level that caused the biggest challenges.

And finally, I would like to share a little summer mood in the first autumn coolness. The innovative victory trophy from the dental nurses' summer get-together and... cake competition 2024:

Best wishes,

Siri