Just in time for the meeting tomorrow, here is a summary of teh last meeting:
TNDR Meeting Feb 7 2013
Last meeting we elected Beat Amrein to be part of the election committee. The election committee will find candidates for the posts for next year, and if you are interested in being a representative you should contact them. The members are: Beat, Wei Li and Andreina Francisco.
There was also some information about a recent decision by the faculty about scholarships, which is now in effect for all new PhD students. PhD students on scholarships should get the same amount of money per month as the normal salary for a PhD student with employment, after taxes. So, if the scholarship is less money than that, the department has to pay the rest. (There are exceptions for the International Science Program and Erasmus Mundus scholarships).
Other exciting news is the decision by the university to abolish the study grant ("utbildningsbidrag") from 2015. From 2015 there should not start any new PhD students with study grants! There is though the possibility to get an exemption from this rule, and future TNDR representatives should make sure this is not used too much.
The faculty is also discussing a new "work plan" ("arbetsordning"), basically the rules that decide how the decisions at the faculty are made, what committees there should be and how these should be. The big difference to previous plans is in the faculty board, which will be reduced in numbers (but we keep the same amount of representatives) and also that there will be three new groups for preparing the topics for the faculty board. This plan is still under discussion and the faculty will decide later (April or May, I don't remember) on this plan, or a version thereof.
Some upcoming social events were presented:
-the lab rally - still under planning by the board (and if you have a lab we could visit, tell us!)
-PhD gasque on April 13 - today (April 2nd) is the last day to register!
Other things that were mentioned were: the faculty boards meeting, where Gotland, moving the IT department and gender equality in committees was discussed; the doctoral board (the university wide board) has discussed the promise by the government to come with a bill about immigration and hopefully there will be some changes in the rules for PhD students visas.