Contract management: Nonsense or novel way to collaborate in universities?

1. Contract management: Nonsense or novel way to collaborate in universities? Old way of handling things: • Your department has problems, such as ... poor • competitiveness, low enrollments, unfavorable • age distribution • 2. Admin. tells you: there is no money. End. There is a new way: • Propose a solution that is relevant and interesting • for whole university • 2. Enter into a contract, get the money, and • solve problems

2. How it really works: Example Dept. of physics Problem: Can‘t convince best students to go for university carreer due to booming economy Idea: New model for attracting young scientists: „competetive tenure track associate professorship“ Implementation 1. part: 1. PH needed 2 AProf-positions. Had 2 „naked“ FProf-positions, EE and MA had AProf- positions + equip 2. Generated new interdisciplinary chairs: Mathematical physics + Nanotechnology 3. PH gave FProfs to EE and MA, they provided infrastructure and gave AProfs to PH

3. Concrete example: contract manangement Phyics dept – Univ.admin. Implementation 2. part: • Generate pool of 5 Assoc.-Prof. positions. • Have 3, got extra 2 from EE and Math 2. Call for 5 „competetive tenure track“ AProfs: Age ~ 33, no habilitation, excellent CV Position is temp. for 5 years, max. 2 can get tenured* Must acquire min. of 2 research contracts (125K€/a) *) present: temp. pos. cannot get tenure at all Dept. provides: space, invest, infrastructure Univ. provides: running budget 25 K€/a per person, if conditions fulfilled