Who are the rector and vice rectors anyway?
NEWS
The new rector and vice rectors of the University of Helsinki started their five-year term last year. But who are they and what do they do? We looked into the matter for you!
Who are the rector and vice rectors?
Sari Lindblom, rector. Lindblom has been a member of the University’s senior leadership since 2017 when she started working as the vice rector in charge of teaching. She is looking forward to the five-year term and hopes that the world becomes a more peaceful place during it.
Hanna Snellman, vice rector in charge of international affairs, public engagement and equality. Snellman started working as a vice rector in 2018, and this is her second five-year term. She is hopeful about the future and eager to carry out the plans made during the previous term.
Jouni Hirvonen, vice rector in charge of innovations, infrastructures and facilities, including campus development. During the previous term, Hirvonen served one and a half years as the vice rector in charge of research and doctoral education. He believes that the overall success of the rector and vice rectors will be determined by success in the matters he is now in charge of.
Anna Portaankorva, vice rector in charge of research, doctoral education and sustainable development. This is Portaankorva’s first term in the University’s senior leadership. She has very high expectations for the term. The position is different to her previous ones in faculty management, but Portaankorva is very eager to get to work for science.
Kai Nordlund, vice rector in charge of academic affairs, digitalisation, Swedish-language affairs and financial planning and monitoring. Nordlund also deputises for the rector. He has served a few years in the University’s senior leadership and is looking forward to a full five-year term. Nordlund wants to develop the University and Finnish university education as a whole by expanding and improving teaching in Finnish, Swedish and English.
What do the rector and vice rectors do in concrete terms?
The rector and vice rectors are responsible for the University’s operative activities. By contrast, the University Board decides on major strategic guidelines, which means that the Board cooperates closely with the rector and vice rectors.
‘In addition to the rector’s general duties, wellbeing and communality have been separately specified as my areas of responsibility’, Rector Lindblom explains. ‘I am very happy about this. My own background is in psychology, and I have even studied wellbeing among students and personnel.’
The rector is supported in their duties by four vice rectors who all have their own areas of responsibility. Even though the rector and vice rectors all have their own clear duties, cooperation between them is important. The senior leadership as a whole is responsible for the University’s internal operation as well as societal impact.
Besides collective responsibilities, what duties do the vice rectors have?
‘I am in charge of international affairs and, as a new duty for this term, I will be responsible for matters related to equality. I am also the vice rector in charge of public engagement. I work on all these themes by investing in cooperation and combining the different areas. This means that I get to combine international affairs, equality, public engagement and cultural heritage’, Vice Rector Hanna Snellman describes her responsibilities.
How would you amplify the international community’s voice within the University?
‘I have already started working on this during the previous term. I have tried to ensure that information would also reach people who do not understand Finnish. My goal is that the implementation plan for 2025–2028 includes an entry on ensuring the participation of international personnel in decision-making bodies. HYY also has a key role in this.’
‘It is also important to remember that we have a wide variety of students from different background: Finnish-speaking Finns, Swedish-speaking Finns, Sámi students and a whole bunch of Finns whose home language is something else than Finnish, Swedish or Sámi. We also have people who have moved to Finland at different stages of their lives before their studies. And finally, we have international students from the EU as well as elsewhere. When we consider how to involve international people, all this diversity should be kept in mind’, Snellman points out.
‘The University of Helsinki has not traditionally been known as an innovation university but we are currently strongly investing in this and in innovation culture through both personnel and students’, Vice Rector Jouni Hirvonen remarks on his areas of responsibility, innovations in particular. ‘We have great potential due to being as multidisciplinary and wide-ranging a community of competence as we are. This means that we unavoidably produce things that may result in commercially and socially important innovations’, he continues.
Hirvonen is also responsible for infrastructures, facilities and campus development. What kind of significance does operating in multiple locations have for our University?
‘I will use my own scientific background, pharmacy, as an example. The pharmacy building was previously located in the City Centre. I would claim that the move to Viikki in 1995 was the best thing that has ever happened to pharmacists from the perspective of teaching and research. That move facilitated teaching and research laboratory functions in modern facilities.’
Hirvonen does not consider multiple locations as an obstacle to multidisciplinary cooperation between campuses. ‘Multi- and interdisciplinary approaches have increased greatly. The campuses being located all around the city will still cause some challenges related to time and place, but these can all be overcome, and we can develop a culture of cooperation. We will have faith in this in any future developmental measures, too’, he asserts.
‘The University of Helsinki is a strong science university with long traditions and a good reputation as a scientific community. The vice rector in charge of research does not dictate what gets studied or what should be studied. We have the freedom of research and sciences, but research still needs to be directed and guided. We have to understand what is going on in the world and what is expected of us. As the vice rector in charge of research, I will work towards us having as good conditions for research and fostering new ideas as possible’, Vice Rector Anne Portaankorva, who is in charge of research, doctoral education and sustainable development, describes her role.
Research and teaching have a strong connection at the University of Helsinki. This can be understood as our teaching being strongly based on research through both contents and methods but also as students learning about and understanding research activities during their studies. In what other ways should the research activities of the University of Helsinki be visible to basic degree students?
‘We are well known for our doctoral education, and we educate the most doctors in Finland. I would hope that students still completing their basic degree could get excited about and realise that they have the chance of becoming a doctoral graduate and that making a doctoral thesis could be fun. They could already get the spark during their basic degree. Our goal is that research aiming at a doctoral thesis could already be begun during the basic degree’, Portaankorva explains.
‘I have a pretty long list of responsibilities. Academic affairs, Swedish-language teaching, digitalisation, financial planning and monitoring as well as quality matters’, the final vice rector to take his turn, Kai Nordlund, lists with a laugh. ‘But these have surprisingly many things in common. When I started as a vice rector, digitalisation and teaching did not have a whole lot in common, but developments like ChatGPT have brought along a major change. Now, it is good that these themes are under the same vice rector, as it helps us with our attempts to utilise artificial intelligence as well as possible. I also deputise for the rector.’
The University of Helsinki is a significant provider of Swedish-language university education in Finland. How do you see the significance of this from the perspective of the University of Helsinki’s educational selection as a whole?
‘Swedish-language education is a very important part of our operation. Around 10% of our teaching is conducted in Swedish. We obviously have the Swedish School of Social Science, which is a completely Swedish-language unit, but we also have dozens of professors all around the University teaching in Swedish. We have been happy to see how Swedish-language education has developed during the last 10–15 years. It is very important that Swedish-language teaching is provided in Finland. There are many fields where we are the only institution offering teaching in Swedish. It is crucial for bilingual Finland to continue forward as a bilingual country’, Nordlund states.
In addition to the vice rectors, the rector also has their own designated area of responsibility: communality and wellbeing. Sari Lindblom, how would you like to promote student wellbeing in our University as the rector?
‘I would like to have all work on wellbeing carried out in the same place, with the entire community there’, Lindblom reflects. ‘What I mean is that students and personnel should not be separated. Being aware of the challenges students and personnel face helps us better promote wellbeing. I am also working on a kind of rector’s round table for people studying wellbeing, with regular meetings in mind. In this matter, too, it is important to base our actions on research. We need low-threshold forms of support as well as different forms of support in general. We must have a comprehensive selection of support to ensure that everyone can find the support that suits them the best’.
‘There is a lot of work to do on this, and the work never ends, but we hope to be able to develop our processes to ensure that everyone knows where and from whom they can get support at the earliest possible stage. From my own research, I know that if it takes too long for someone to notice that you have problems or for you to seek help yourself, you will unfortunately very quickly fall into a vicious circle that eats away your motivation, self-confidence and belief in your own abilities’, Lindblom describes.
