Personal på vift

I morgon bär det av till Finland och Helsingfors. Men idag fortsätter det mödosamma arbetet med att koordinera kursen som jag och Martin Hennel ska hålla på Konstuniversitet i Helsingfors. Bokning av teknik och lokaler, beställa material, kontakta studenter som ska gå kursen, kolla med ansvariga tekniker med mera. Det påminner om hemma.

Bilden ovan ger en glimt av hur det kommer att se ut i Helsingfors. Jag hoppas kunna visa en hel del spännande bilder och annat material här på bloggen, så följ med.

 

Thank you Annie for a great Flinders week together. Hope your trip home was easy peasy. See you later this week!

I´ve had three more days in this relaxed corner of the world. It´s Monday late afternoon which means that you guys back at Malmö University could be having your morning fika right now. In an hour I´m starting my journey back home. I´m really going to miss my new colleagues from Flinders but fortunately some of them are coming to Malmö University in the beginning of February. Looking forward to that!

 

Today I got to talk to several people, beginning with a morning meeting with Verity starting the plans for her visit to Malmö University. Preliminary the dates for her visit are now set and she´ll come early February. Around these days she will of course visit friends in England and Denmark as well as go up north to see the northern lights. Why not, everything is just so close!

During her visit to Mah she will do a workshop together with Susanne Schech, teacher from the School of History and International Relations at Flinders University. Susanne will also visit Malmö University, at the same time as Verity, within this Erasmus + project. They will show how they work together, professionals and academics. Veritys goal is to make students reflect on what they learn and how they can use that ahead, bulk up their skills and move forwards, towards work.

Of to the next meeting with Natalia Hutton (Admissions Manager), and Jarrad Benson (Team Leader for the Perspective Students Team). Natalias team have completely different work tasks compared to the Admissions office at Malmö University. At Flinders these 8-9 people work a lot like our Education Coordinators/Study Coordinators at the faculties/departments at Malmö University! But for the whole university, central. Jarrads team of 6 people mainly work with recruitment and prospective students. They organise visits from school classes. Pupils from the age of 13 and up can come visit Flinders and Annie and I saw many school classes in different ages, in their school uniforms, visiting Flinders during our week here. Jarrad and his team also visit as many schools as they can during the year, as well as organising special days on campus for special groups, for instance parents or study advisers. To be able to manage all of this, a whole lot of their work are done by student ambassadors.

Before lunch I had time to meet Jacqui Forte, Student Program Advisor at the School of History & International Relations. She works quite similar to many of the subject advisors at the departments at Lund University. She assists current and future students with their study plans and enrolment, to ensure they manage their studies, which also includes quite a lot of administration although the department of course has administrators as well. Like in my job students come to her with questions high and low.

A big deferens between my expertise and all of the work carried out here is that longer individual study- and career counselling sessions does not seem to occur at Flinders. As always when I try to figure out why Flinders and Malmö University are organized so differently it boils down to that at Flinders students pay for their education, and also there’s obvious competition between the 3-4 universities in South Australia. Various global and Australian ranking lists are extremely important, like the national one measuring employment rate 3 months, one year and three years after education.

Late lunch and final meeting with Verity and her boss Nina. Mainly we talked about how we can work together in the long run, despite time difference and long distances. We will try to do long distance workshops for each other’s students and see how that works out.

And now, a couple of last pictures of the great campus of Flinders University…

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

We took a stroll over to the Social Sciences building this morning, where together with Verity, we met with Susanne Schech and Maryanne Kelton, two academics within the Department of History and International Relations.  Susanne visited Malmö University in 2008, and she has been collaborating with Malmö’s K3 on and off for many years.  She has been selected to come to Malmö University together with Verity within this Erasmus + Project in February 2017.  Verity will try to coordinate things so that their time at Malmö will overlap.  Within the project, Susanne is to deliver 8 hours of lectures at GPS, where Verity will join her to add the careers perspective of things within the department’s area of focus.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Nina got her department together for a farewell luncheon at the university pub, The Tavern. This place is amazing with views looking out to the sea, outdoor seating to fully enjoy these views, a pool table for students to use to relieve their stress, and a full menu of delicious bar food, including beer and wine. We sat outside, to enjoy the spectacular views looking out on campus, while enjoying the best burger Malin has ever eaten. Conversation was relaxed; we chatted about both Australian and Swedish culture, animal life, and politics of course (yes, the upcoming US election did come up). Did you know that it is compulsory to vote in Australia? You learn something new every day! Oh, and we were also given nice cloth Flinders bags with fun goodies in them.

                          

Today is Annie’s last day in Australia. She said her farewells to the group after the late afternoon lunch, in order to prepare for her travels back to Sweden. A quick stop to China town to check out the market, and off to the airport she goes! Malin will continue her visit at the university on Monday.

  

 

 

 

 

We began our day by listening to Rohan Holland from Ready Grad, a graduate recruitment development company, who delivered a workshop called “Goal Setting & Attainment” to a group of students as part of the Horizon Awards program. We squeezed in a quick lunch after this, and ran our workshop again, “The Swedish Work Culture & More”. 24 students signed up to attend and 16 came in addition to a handful of staff members. This group was even more engaged than yesterdays’; they asked many questions, and a some stayed after to chat with us. Malin even received a request by one of the students to meet her on Monday to discuss the possibility of studying at Malmö University. Rohan stayed and listened to our workshop, and held another one directly after ours ended. It was a career workshop kind of a day at Flinders University. We noticed that some of the students stayed on to listen to all three workshops in a row; now that’s dedication!

   

After this, we finally got to meet “our” students – one was a Swedish student nearing the end of his exchange from Malmö University at Flinders, and 3 were Flinders students eagerly anticipating their Erasmus + exchange to Malmö University. Johan, the Swedish student, comes from GPS, and the other three will be joining the GPS institution when they come to Malmö. We had a lovely dialogue and exchange outside, since we finally got “Adelaide weather – 25c, blue skies, and sunny”. We had the opportunity to learn a bit more about one another, and concluded our conversation by informing the students that we will set up a time to meet once they are situated and settled in Malmö.

Since we haven’t had the opportunity to walk around campus yet, and our stay here is slowly coming to a close, we decided to take a quick stroll around.  Wow, what a spacious campus, surrounded by a forest, with parrots flying around everywhere.  Although we saw parrots galore, we did not have any koala bear sightings.  Maybe tomorrow! This campus is so large, that they even have their own university bus transport system. Quite impressive!

       

Given the gorgeous weather we were handed today, we seized the opportunity to go to the seaside town of Glenelg after our day at the university. We had a nice stroll down the little shopping street, and stayed long enough to catch the awesome sunset!
  

   

We began preparing content for a workshop we were to present to Flinders students prior to our trip to Australia, and today was finally workshop day! The title of our workshop is “The Swedish Work Culture & More”. Despite the fact that students are no longer in class and it’s now exam time, there were 20 students signed up for our workshop and 15 came as well as a few staff members. Now don’t get us wrong, there are plenty of students on campus, everywhere, but considering they are in an intense exam period, we were impressed to have such a good turnout for our workshop. We played off of one another during this workshop, given our different international backgrounds, which is where the “….. & More” part of the workshop comes in. The focus was on Swedish work culture, but we also brought in examples and compared things to the USA and Italy. There were a few technical difficulties with the internet not allowing us to show a little video clip we intended for the students to see, but all in all we were pleased with our delivery and interaction coming from the students. We will repeat this workshop again tomorrow with a new set of students!

  

In addition to our workshop, our day was filled with a variety of other things. We had the pleasure to listen in on a counselling appointment with Bernie, our chauffeur from Sunday. What a pro! Annie went to a LinkedIn workshop, delivered by Greg Ward, another Career Development Consultant. It was interesting to see both similarities and differences between how we do things. Directly following the LinkedIn workshop, Annie attended an employer presentation which was extremely interesting. The guest speaker was an HR professional from a home development company, and the presentation, “Tips for New Graduates”, re-confirmed that what we inform the students is exactly in line with what employers are doing. While Annie attended these presentations, Malin had another run through about the Horizon Awards program with Beth.

Nina and Verity were so kind to take us out for drinks nibbles at an amazing roof top bar overlooking Adelaide after our work day. You can’t beat ending a day with an amazing view and lovely company!