New PhD committee and an active PhD area

Per Gregersen joins as a new VIP member in Flakkebjerg. Together with Henrik Skovgård, he will primarily take care of the PhD work with e.g. well-being interviews, exams, and defence in Flakkebjerg, but will also assist with exams and defences in Foulum. 

Also, on the VIP side, Jim Rasmussen joins the committee in place of Mathias N. Andersen, who has become section leader in KLIMA. Jim has extensive experience working with young people and he will take over Mathias tasks in relation to well-being interviews, exams, and defences. Over the next few months, the new members of the committee will be thoroughly onboarded, so that they will be well dressed to carry out their new tasks.

The new students on the committee are: Laura Sofie Harbo, Yuting Fu, Teodora Dorca-Preda, and Margaret Rose McCollough. Laura has also taken on the job of sitting on the central GSTS PhD committee. They are faced with having to work on a lot of good initiatives that are underway in the PhD field.

Thanks to the students who have been a part of the committee over the past year: Jorge Vélez, Saghar Motarjemi, Yannik Roell and Shuxuan Jing. Your work has been characterized by a 2020 in the sign of the corona, so the activities and events we usually have were cancelled, and we have had to think very differently and creatively. You young people have done this in the best way and you have kept the flag high and made a huge effort in the junior area by launching a lot of super good initiatives such as arranging virtual-Friday-get-together during the lockdown. In this way, you have tried to take good care of the fellow students who had a hard time. You follow up with a Junior Hub in Foulum and a student club in Flakkebjerg, where PhD students (and postdocs) meet and discuss relevant academic topics, while having fun across the sections. It helps to increase awareness of each other's areas and to manage the cohesion of the department. It is a fantastic initiative.

Another of the more recent initiatives at the department is our PhD course in “Agroecology”, which has been run once and which will next be held in February 2021. The course provides an insight into the concept of agroecology and the goal is to ensure that all have a similar understanding of what the area covers. The course is compulsory for all PhD students in AGRO and postdocs have the opportunity to participate if they wish. In addition to the course, YouTube videos on the various areas of the subject of agroecology are also worked on an ongoing basis. This work is also initiated and carried by the juniors of AGRO.

It means a lot, both for the committee but also for the department as a whole, that we have active students in the PhD committee who take responsibility and show initiative. THANKS! 

In addition to the course in agroecology, many of AGRO’s employees and students put a lot of work into the courses every year and it is very positive that we have many and good PhD courses. It is an advantage for the students because they save both a lot of time and money when the courses run in-house, but it also attracts students from outside who provide important input in the learning process and at the same time help to put AGRO on the world map. So, a big thank you to those who put time and energy into this.