Student–alumni collaboration important to the new Dean

Marcus Lindahl is the new Dean of collaboration at the Disciplinary Domain of Science and Technology.

Marcus Lindahl may be new to his external collaboration post, but his experience in this area is extensive. Since 2011, he has been a Professor in Industrial Engineering and Management at the Ångström Laboratory, where he has collaborated with external industrial and public sector partners alongside his research and teaching.

In his research, he has focused on innovation processes and the organisation and management of technology development. In addition, he has supported researchers, teachers and students in approaching businesses and industry and the wider community. But he has no general recipe for how to succeed with external collaboration.

“If we were aware of some kind of general clause, we would have solved the challenge of external collaboration. But from my research and experience of external collaboration, there are two big things that I see as crucial. Both parties must feel that they will get something out of the collaboration, that they are equal partners in some respect,” says Marcus Lindahl and continues:

“Then it’s about that good old platitude that you have to build trust. The best projects I have ever seen, researched or been involved in myself are those that have started out on a slightly smaller scale and have then tested their way forward together. Once we have seen that we can arrive at something useful and get what we wanted, we have scaled up and it’s turned out to be quite successful.”

Understanding what each party brings to the table is important

In collaborations between companies and researchers, a level of suspicion can sometimes creep in, according to Marcus Lindahl. Issues related to publication and patenting can arise, and here the problems can be exaggerated. That’s where it’s important to try to understand what the needs of the other party are.

“Where the parties have made efforts to gain a deeper understanding of the conditions that apply to the research, or the operational limitations on the innovation department for adopting the research results, the collaboration has worked much better.”

He thinks that being a dean for external collaboration is fun for many reasons. External collaboration has long been one of his research interests and spheres of work. Now he has the chance to put these capabilities to good use in a wider context.

“I have come to the conclusion that external collaboration is really important. There is so much we can do in it. Just think about the tremendous opportunity we have as a university and faculty with our alumni. We could be a much bigger resource for our alumni, and we already know that our alumni want to be a much bigger resource for their old university than they get to be.”

What obstacles have there been to collaborating with alumni?

“On the one hand, we have been a bit late to step up to the plate. Now that will probably upset some people, but we ought to be viewing our alumni activities as something strategically important, not just something for old alumni to potter around with. We ought to see how strategically important the alumni are for us and we for them. Look at Harvard and MIT and anyone we want to compare ourselves with. There you’ll find exceptionally well-developed alumni activities that are looked after by people at the universities. Some alumni become so successful that they come back and can order research or contract education from us or support the university.”

He continues:

“Besides it being our civic duty, it can also be said that alumni who can simply come back and guest-lecture in the programme they studied themselves represents a huge asset, where students get to ‘meet themselves’ about five years down the track of their futures. We have alumni who are knowledgeable about study programme and also have life and professional experience to give back. That’s super important!”

According to Marcus Lindahl, there should be an obvious place for alumni in today’s focus on lifelong learning. An exciting idea is to offer the alumni a kind of service contract which would allow them to regularly update their skills and knowledge at their old university. But that would need all parts of the disciplinary domain to be on board.

“In order to find out how we can support alumni activities in the University, we have started a project in our disciplinary domain. Together we are going to think about what best practice we currently have: What resources are there today, where is support needed, what levels should we be working at? A group that has been neglected in the past are those who have a postgraduate degree but have left academia – how are we going to find something that would appeal to them and create good relations with them, and who is going to be responsible for it?”

Increased collaboration in centre of excellence initiatives

Alumni activities are not the only thing on Marcus Lindahl’s desk. There are other things too, many of which concern new centres of excellence and projects of a similar nature in the disciplinary domain, including the Vinnova-supported centres of excellence:  Additive Manufacturing for the Life Sciences and Batteries Sweden. In  Additive Manufacturing for the Life Sciences, business and industry and a number of research groups in science and technology as well as medicine and pharmacy are collaborating with Uppsala University Hospital. Batteries Sweden in turn is collaborating with businesses to support cutting-edge research in the area of batteries.

The goal of these efforts is to strengthen research and industry, but there are also increasing demands for running educational activities within these centres. Marcus Lindahl wants to contribute to this development. He would also like these centres of excellence to get more attention internally and externally.

“We are outstanding in these areas, even if our results on measurements of external collaboration have not been so great in the past compared with other higher education institutions. But – as the fan I am of our university – I would say we are actually pretty good, although we haven’t been terribly successful in communicating what we do in that way. So I do want to do that.”

Another initiative he is looking forward to working with is the EU consortium EnLight. In this project, Uppsala University and eight other European universities will be working with challenge-driven and collaboration-driven interdisciplinary education on the theme of sustainable cities. It will give students, teachers and researchers the chance to collaborate internationally in a number of areas, including digitization and AI, energy, and the impact of climate change on regional ecosystems.

“It’s incredibly important that our students have the opportunity to learn from the real problems and challenges that await them in the future and to get a feeling for future employers. But even in the other direction too – it’s important for business and industry and other civil society actors to meet and learn from our students even before they have completed their education. This is something that is now being made possible at the European level as a result of the EnLight project.

“More collaborations in our courses and study programmes between business, industry, government agencies and students is part of the recipe for success in the future – where students are really the crucial factor. 

“It usually upsets my research colleagues when I say that our great contribution to the community at large is not our outstanding research but all the students who get their degrees from us. The fact is that the supply of PhDs and students at the Bachelor’s and Master’s levels represents huge value in what we create in society. So we have to make sure that we keep on our toes for our future and current alumni.”