From the view of the University Assembly, the year 2009 came to an end following the meeting on the 26th November. The message of the University Assembly president Juerg Dual on the strategic planning of the ETH Board for 2012 to 2016 targets next year already – and beyond: from the start of February 2010 the institutions should be able to make a statement about it, including the University Assembly. Feedback is expected on this central topic in March. According to Juerg Dual, the months ahead are set to be exciting and intensive.  

At its meeting in December – which in the meantime has taken place – the ETH Board elected Roland Siegwart as vice-president of Research and Corporate Relations at ETH Zurich and Philippe Gillet as vice-president of Academic Affairs at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology Lausanne (EPFL). The ETH Board will also transfer 5.3 million Francs to the ETH employee pension plan Publica in 2009 as a one-time employer payment, said Markus Stauffacher, the employee representative in the council of both ETH Zurich und EPF Lausanne. People aged between 45 and 55 that are insured with Publica, who have been disadvantaged to date, can look forward to this. In view of the fact that the overall financial situation still looks insecure, it is pleasing that Markus Stauffacher was assured by decision makers in Berne that the ETH domain will remain free of cutbacks until 2011.  

Measures for increased appreciation

Working groups have now proposed measures on two issues which were intensively discussed by the University Assembly in 2009. Firstly, they concern the promotion of the appreciation of administrative and technical employees. A sabbatical for this group of people is already a given; furthermore the working group encourages subsidising further education more intensively, to better appreciate the share of non-academic personnel in research results or to increase the significance of the yearly appraisal talks. The idea of raising the profile of the issue with a new prize was well received, while on the other hand the University Assembly was less enthusiastic about training people about this in specific courses. The plenum found that these thoughts need to be further developed, before they can be presented to the Executive Board.  

Stopping the fall in senior scientists

The working group “Hoeherer Mittelbau” (senior scientific staff) broached the substantial fall in the number of permanently employed scientific employees in their paper (30 percent since 2003) – this is a problem which the University Assembly President Juerg Dual brought to people’s attention at the ETH Tag celebration. The previous executive board of ETH Zurich had tried to remain as flexible as possible with regards to personnel after a retirement and with new appointments and therefore determined that senior scientists are allowed to be a maximum of five years younger than their professor. By doing so, they overreached and there is a risk that important know-how is being lost. It is suggested that this clause be relaxed, although it concerns the area of responsibility of the president. The plenum decided to arrange a meeting with Ralph Eichler before taking further action.