Last week, the faculty council of Behavioral Sciences approved the reorganization and investment plan of the interim dean, Lieteke van Vucht Tijssen. Seventeen full-time jobs will be eliminated, which in three years will save a million euros per year.
Behavioral Sciences Dean Van Vucht Tijssen is relieved that the plan can now be executed. `Happy is obviously not the right word', the dean said, `because for some people in the faculty, the consequences are very tough. It is, however, good for all those involved that we have created clarity; all in all we've been working on the plan for a year.'
The dean claims that the reorganization is required to get the faculty's finances in order and to free money for the needed investments in promising activities of Behavioral Sciences. A number of consistently unprofitable activities will be discontinued or reshaped. The heaviest blows fall at the former groups of Instrumentation Technology (ISM) and Curriculum (CRC) of the Educational Design, Management & Media program. ISM will be discontinued and replaced with the new department of Psychonomics and Human Performance Technology; five and a half full-time positions will be lost. In the Curriculum group, part of the research will be discontinued; five people will lose their jobs.
The primary goal of the reorganization of the EDMM part is a shift in emphasis from a didactic to a psychological orientation. A logical step, Van Vucht Tijssen claims: `Nationally, EDMM always had more of a psychological orientation, instead of a sociological or pedagogical one. It also is fitting to start a good psychology program that is based in part on good research.' With the exception of the psychology branch of Behavioral Sciences, the resources that become available will be invested in the research of Communication Science.
In total, 16.95 full-time positions, filled by 21 people, will be lost at Behavioral Sciences. Twelve jobs will be lost due to attrition (termination of temporary contract or invocation of FPU regulation). For nine employees, replacement within the faculty is not possible. They are subject to dismissal and fall under the UT-wide social plan.
