The Core Curriculum

In this episode, my guest is my colleague Lieve Van Hoof, former president of the UGhent PostDoc community, former co-president of the Young Academy and professor in late antiquity at Ghent university. Is a revolution in academic assessment unfolding? That was the theme of a recent forum by the University Foundation, in which Lieve was a panelist. In this episode we try to unpack this very enticing subject for you!

In this second episode of the 3rd semester, my guest is Michaël Michiels, an alumnus of what would later become the International Institute of Restorative Practices Graduate School in PennSylvania and coach supporting teams to find more soul in their joint goals. We talk about learning, successful decision making processes and about the tension between selection and growth.  

Welcome to the 3rd semester of ‘the core curriculum’, a podcast in which we explore the core tasks that we ascribe to the often age old institutions called ‘universities’. After having talked at length about education and research, the 2 traditional pilars in the mission statement of universities:, in this semester, we zoom out and shift the focus to the institutional context around these core tasks. 

This episode is episode 1 of this semester, and in it, I’m interviewing Bram Van Oostveldt. He is a professor in Theater Studies and a colleague housed in the same building as the group that I’m a part of. As plans to completely remodel our building are being drawn up, we talk about imbedding our work in the cultural scene of the city, and how deliberately abandoning the walled campus model creates opportunities for both research and education. 

As always, thank you for listening, I hope you enjoy this episode! Stay tuned for the next one, which will be an interview with Michael Michiels, a team management coach and alumnus of the International Institute of Restorative Practices Graduate School in PennSylvania.

In this episode, we’re talking to Rik Van de Walle, our rector, about ‘basic research funding’; a new policy introducing non-competitive research funding for all professors at Ghent University. And of course, this is just a starting point for a broader conversation about research and the core tasks of a University. 

As sometimes happens in an academic setting, things did not go entirely as planned for the final episode of this semester and we will have to try again during summer. So stay tuned for an interview with our Ghent University rector Rik Vandewalle on the recently introduced move towards ‘basic research funding’ as a summer snack before the start of the fall semester that will focus on organizational structures that support the core tasks of the university.

In this 4th episode of the second semester of The Core Curriculum, I’m interviewing someone who has been a constant source of inspiration for the development of my personal views on research policy: Els Stuyven, director of research affairs at HOGent University of Applied Sciences and Arts, and above all chief architect of their pioneering move towards non-competitive internal funding. 

In this third episode of the second semester of The Core Curriculum, I’m joined by 2 of the 3 junior researcher staff members in our board of governors at Ghent University. We discuss their successful campaign for more postdoc funding and we dream about an ideal university for young researchers.

In this second episode of the second semester of The Core Curriculum, we continue to look at the role of research as a core task of the university. This time we zoom out and look at the fit of academic research within the broader innovation ecosystem of our society in an interview with Karel Volckaert, COO at Itinera.

Welcome back to the second semester of 'the core curriculum'. As announced last time, in this semester we will focus on research as one of the core tasks of the university. In this first episode of the new semester, I'm interviewing Erik Meers, a colleague from the school of bioscience-engineering with a rather successful and diverse research group.

In this final episode of the first semester of ‘the core curriculum’, we pause to look back at what lies behind. With Pieter Dhondt, a historian studying the modern Western-European university, we dive into the genesis and development of the narrative on the core tasks of the institution, focusing on the shift between the early-modern and the modern period.