- The University
- 01/11/2024
Very exciting, is how dean of the Department of Applied Physics & Science Education Kees Storm describes his 2018 inaugural address. It was the first time he openly advocated his “Everyone Professor” idea. This involved using the term ‘professor’ not only for full professors, but also for assistant and associate professors, and giving the latter the right to wear a gown and – if merited – to confer PhDs.
“Then you stand there, looking out over a full room of people. And then you have to see how they react,” he says, looking back. What he saw, however, was that over the years the idea stuck. Especially when the Young Academy of the KNAW got behind it and former KNAW president Marileen Dogterom wrote a column on the subject. “I realized that more people thought like me and that gave me the strength to pursue my idea.”
Unanimous
And so he ran with it. At first it led to some good-natured joking around, he says: “Then we laughed a little: haha, you are a professor and so are you. And then a good conversation ensued. It’s very nice to see that people who were skeptical at first talked to others in the department and then came back to me and said: let’s do it. Getting unanimous support is very satisfying.”
A new policy, also called ‘Everyone Professor’, is now giving concrete shape to Storm’s vision. Making this happen wasn’t easy, he admits. “What came as a positive surprise to me, however, is that we spent most of our time safeguarding the quality of supervision of PhD students.” There’s a reason, he says, that you can’t immediately supervise other PhD students when you yourself are presented with a PhD degree. “It’s a relationship between two people that you have to manage. There is a great breadth in the way people behave in their field and conduct research, but also in the way they need to be supervised to make the process as pleasant and successful as possible. That requires flexibility and good listening skills.”
PhD supervisor
While the right to wear a gown and use the title of professor is taking immediate effect for all academic staff, this is not the case for the ius promovendi(the right to confer PhDs). “We don’t want to just give everyone those rights like that and trust that it will all go well. People who are allowed to act as PhD supervisors must be able to show that they are ready for it.” There are several ways to make sure of this.
There will be a Supervision Qualification that scientists can obtain. Before that is in place, however, they can also take a voluntary course that already exists to develop as supervisors. If they have supervised several PhD students in the past and can show that they have done so as a responsible supervisor, a course isn’t always necessary. In any promotion, supervising doctoral students should now be made an explicit criterion for evaluation with an appointment advisory committee (BAC). “We do also let the departments make their own choices in this matter,” Storm says. “For example, about when to make the exception of not doing it through the BAC.”
Everyone a gown
A day before the official introduction of the new policy, a group of people are already walking down the hall of Atlas to the defence room. They are all wearing gowns. Leading the way is beadle Annelies Verschuren, who afterwards laughingly admits: “I got an early start.” She thinks it’s a good development that assistant and associate professors are now also allowed to wear gowns. “My personal opinion: they have contributed so much to the creation of research already, so why not?” The staff members to whom she already lent a gown today were very happy about it, she says. An emeritus committee member was also very enthusiastic about the new development.
In the closet of the committee room, there are some loaner gowns that the beadle brought from the gown room. A total of twenty gowns are available for people who don’t have their own. For now, she is fine with this, and even now ‘Everyone Professor’ is here, there will be enough gowns for all PhD ceremonies. At graduation ceremonies or academic celebrations like MomenTUm, things will be a bit more complicated. “Then it’s the professors, plus up to 20 people.”. Although gowns are not mandatory on a PhD committee, the beadle expects to lend more of them with the new rules. Initially, we are going to do that with the resources that are there, but she does quietly hope for a garment steamer. After all, the loaner gowns never go to the dry cleaners, and especially the heavy ones made of cloth don’t breathe a whole lot.
By law, it has already been possible since 2017 for associate professors to act as PhD supervisors as well. At TU/e, this was only reserved to qualified associate professors until now. Have they actually made use of that right? “We have quite a few associate professors who now have the right to confer PhDs. They really appreciated getting it as well.” According to Storm, this is mainly due to the sense of recognition for the work they were doing. “If you don’t have the right to confer PhDs, but you did supervise a PhD student all the way to the conferral, then you have to have a full professor do the honors at the big moment. The latter then gets to say the magic words and hand over the diploma. It’s an inconvenience we’ve been aware of for years.” Storm himself was fortunate that the professor in his group was aware of that inconvenience and clearly did everything he could to remove it, he adds.
New generation
To make any real changes, he did want to wait until he was a full professor himself. As an associate professor, he didn’t feel it was his place. “You’d prefer it to be granted to you over having to force the issue. I got an email from a former TU/e who retired as an associate professor, who said: how nice that this happened now. He felt like those gowns could sometimes – even though perhaps not intended – give the impression that there was a distinction between an academic upper class and an under class.”
Storm realizes that for some professors, on the other hand, it can be a bit difficult to accept that now a new generation of scholars has to do less for certain prerogatives, such as wearing a gown. “That’s a tangible recognition that you work a lifetime for as an academic. But when it comes to expertise and the role you’ve played, I think: let’s give it to people at the time they’ve earned it. If you are at a PhD ceremony as an expert in a field, then I don’t think it’s appropriate that you can wear a dress and I can’t because you’re a little older. Current professors will have to let go of the feeling of ‘I had to go through this journey, so you should too’.”
Naive
The transition to ‘Everyone Professor’ taught the dean some valuable lessons. In the beginning, for example, he “naively” thought that TU/e’s Young Academy would think it was a great plan. This turned out not to be the case, far from it. “Precisely from them came the question: how do we guarantee the quality of supervision? In a meeting, one of the members said: I don’t know if I’m ready for it, I want the prerogative, but I want to be properly coached for it. I wasn’t prepared for that.” It taught him not to assume that everyone thinks the same way as you. “When it concerns something major like this, you need support,” he said. That he received this is a sign to him that the university is ready for a big batch of new professors.
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