The faculty, which celebrated its thirtieth anniversary last year, currently has 21 ‘regular’ professors and 7 endowed professors. By 2030, nine of them will have retired. How will FASoS handle this? Not by immediately filling every vacancy with a new professor, says Dean Christine Neuhold.
New professors will only be hired if it’s “really necessary”, she explains. “For example, if there’s no one else who can lead a research group, or if we need someone from outside with a large network. They must also be a good fit. We want people with the FASoS DNA: able and willing to take an interdisciplinary approach, open-minded and multilingual.”
Invest in existing staff
The faculty prefers to look for internal candidates, adds Neuhold. “We want to invest in our existing staff. There are so many driven researchers here – people at the peak of their careers who fit our culture. They deserve the chance to move up. If we don’t create opportunities for them, they’ll go elsewhere, and that would be a real loss.” Not replacing ‘expensive’ professors one-for-one frees up the necessary funds for this. “It will allow us to take on more assistant professors and to help existing staff eventually advance to professorship positions. This will also help us improve gender balance, for example, and nurture our own talent.”
Government cuts and political uncertainty also factor into the equation. “We don’t want to spend the entire available budget and leave nothing for the next Faculty Board. Every two years, as a board we review our situation to determine whether we can afford to spend more or need to cut back.”
Shift focus
Will the approach also allow the faculty to make strategic choices and shift its academic focus? “Certainly”, says Neuhold. Among other things, consideration is being given to more emphasis on themes such as “diversity and inclusion, sustainability and security.”
Does that mean certain areas of expertise will be lost? “That’s hard to say right now, but it is something we’re aware of. Take the expertise in the history of medicine and psychiatry we have lost in recent years. You can try to cover that creatively with researchers taking an interdisciplinary approach, looking at it from not just a historical but also an anthropological or philosophical perspective. But sometimes you just conclude that you can’t preserve everything.”
Replacement plans
The Faculty Board will soon meet with all department heads to discuss replacement plans for retiring professors. “The situation varies widely between departments. Some won’t see anyone retire for a while, whereas others will lose several professors. Each department has proposed its own approach, and we’re now looking into what’s feasible within the budget.”
Finally, Neuhold stresses that FASoS does not intend to reduce its total number of professors in the long term. “We’re keeping an eye on that. We’ve followed this strategy since I became dean in 2020.” Since then, six professors have retired, while eight staff members have eventually advanced to professorship positions.