Successful Start for the New Junior Professorship Forum

07/09/2024

Junior professors meet to discuss current issues, tasks and problems - that is the aim of the new, cross-faculty "Junior Professorship Forum". The format was launched on 3 July 2024.

The aim of the new Junior Professorship Forum is to exchange views on current tasks, questions and problems. (Image: Ziegler/JMU)

The special thing about the new format is that the participants themselves determine the topic of their meeting - it is then coordinated by Human Resources (HR) Development. For the forum at the beginning of July, the professors had requested an exchange on the support and supervision of doctoral students. Twelve researchers attended.

Michael Decker, Professor of Pharmaceutical and Medicinal Chemistry and an expert on the topic of supervising doctoral students, as well as members of the academic management team were invited as guests. Their input provided the participants with a basis for reflecting on their own experiences, clarifying specific questions, exchanging concepts for success and finding out about legal aspects of supervising doctoral candidates.

Confidential Dialogue at Eye Level

"I am delighted with the extremely positive response and feedback for this format," says Ljubica Lozo, Head of HR Development and organiser of the forum. "It is important to us to offer junior professors a protected environment in which they can exchange and discuss ideas in complete confidence and at eye level. In this way, we want to help them to further concretise their individual development plans."

The Junior Professorship Forum takes place once a semester. The group of junior professors has already decided on another topic for the next forum on 13 November 2024: It is about status assessment, i.e. analysing the professional progress of junior professors. Interested parties can already register on the event page. Further information can be found on the Human Resources Development page.