When the university went through another financial restructuring, it left the School of Ocean Sciences alone, but it did point out that we needed to attract more students on our physical programs (like geological oceanography, and physical oceanography) in order for it to stay that way. So we figured we look at what we offer. Were there additional things we could offer, were there things we were offering but could make more attractive? And one Monday morning we gathered, and had a good think.
We figured we could reduce the number of programmes a bit, to make the remaining ones stand out. We also considered their names. And we thought of strengthening the build-up of skills through the years.
In the end we only planned one new module. One module became twice as big. One was absorbed into another. There was some general shuffling around.
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| The Hockey Stick graph by Mann er al. (1999), plotted here by Klaus Bitterman. Climate is one of the topics of which we shuffled the modules around. |
Altogether we didn’t plan huge changes, but I think the changes we did plan are positive. I will have to go and think about the details of my affected modules.
We can’t just go and change things. If you offer students a certain curriculum, and they sign up for it, you have to deliver it. And a student could be with us for five years, if they do an integrated master’s with a placement year. So you have to keep doing the old stuff for quite a while. And with a bit of luck, you can run some of the old and the new in parallel. And only in the long run can you do only the new stuff.
I think we did a good job! I am keen to start on it. It will take years before we know it was a success, but it already succeeded in lifting my spirits. And that’s all I could hope for at this stage…
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