Meeting agendas
The Kumpula Physics Wellbeing Group meets approximately monthly, with sometimes extra meetings for specific purposes, such as to organise an upcoming event. Here, for the purposes of transparency, we give short summaries of our meetings.
10.02.2020
- Discussed, and agreed upon, publishing short summaries of our meetings on this website.
- Agreed new members: Eleanna Asvestari and Harriet George.
- Discussed outcome of event held on 30.01.2020, in which the stress survey results were presented and group work culture was discussed.
- General conclusions for any similar future event: i) more early career researchers on the panel, ii) topic of discussion should be more focused, iii) Flinga questions should be followed up on, iv) could collaborate with Junior Faculty Club or Career Services.
- Responses to some questions written up .
04.03.2020
- Discussed how to 'refresh' membership of Wellbeing Group. Agreed upon making an annual, open call for new members. Those members who have served longest, or who cannot continue their role, should be replaced by new members. Efforts should be made to ensure that different groups in the Department are represented in the Wellbeing Group members. Post call in May, with new members beginning in September.
- It was mentioned that postdocs are under-represented on the Faculty Board. Discussed the correct place to discuss issues with postdoc salaries at a general level: perhaps not the Faculty Board but the Rector and the Union.
- Discussed content to add to website: i) code of conduct, ii) what we do, e.g. colloquia, iii) stress survey results.
- Detailed discussion postponed for the panel discussion/group discussion event in May.
- Discussed organising a recreation day (last year a boat trip on 6 June).
24.04.2020
- Discussed upcoming colloquium, the first to happen online. May colloquium to be decided by colloquium subgroup.
- Outdoor trip postponed until autumn due to COVID.
- Discussed avenues for funding for the group, from the Department and from foundations such as Wihuri.
- Call for new members postponed to autumn due to COVID.
- Member of the group, Oliver Gould, to leave the University in September.
- Discussed other possible online activities. Should not to repeat things that are already organised.
- Discussed advertising activities. Proposed email to staff on Vappu.
- Contact cards for low-threshold contact persons, Eija Tuominen.
- Eija Tuominen representing us in Genera and Helsingin Tutkijanaiset Ry - The Helsinki Association of Women Researchers (see here).
27.05.2020
- Discussed upcoming colloquium.
- Discussed plan to define remit of Kumpula Physics Wellbeing Group, to be decided upon in September.
- Break for summer.
Although, the Wellbeing Group continued its activities and meetings this section had fallen out of use, but we intend to revive it and keep it up to date from now on.
21.02.2022
The wellbeing group met to discuss the best ways to support the wellbeing of our community. The chair, Prof. Flyura Djurabekova informed the rest of the group about the outcome of the meeting with the heads of the department, the Dean, and the HR representatives. It was discussed that postdocs remain unsatisfied with their career prospects and salaries. We agreed that although as a wellbeing group we cannot directly help with improving the academic career prospects and salary of postdocs, we can contribute to providing information for possible career developments for non-permanent staff at the departments (career prospects). To this effect we will contact the Junior Faculty Club and the career services to see how we can best support early career researchers on finding the career path that has future prospects and fits their interests. In addition, we discussed on how to improve the communication of supervisees and supervisors so that supervisors offer the best support possible in terms of career advancement either within or beyond academia. The middle group consisting of lecturers and university researchers needs also our attention and trying to identify the difficulties they face is also an item the wellbeing group wishes to help. Finally, we discussed about the possibility of organising a wellbeing event in the springtime for improving the community spirit (retreat).
11.10.2022
- Discussion on new chair and selection
- Discussion on board duty distribution
- Discussion on autumn and potential ideas for spring activities
- Physics Department Christmas Coffee (in planning)
- Workshop where we discuss with the union (under discussion)
- Spring festival with the Department of physics (under discussion)
- Discussion on concrete implementation plan of our Code of Conduct
The PhysHIP wellbeing group met for its first meeting for the academic year 2022-2023. The main topic of the meeting was the restructuring of the board and a preliminary plan of the groups activities for the academic year. We agreed upon the new chair (Dr. Eleanna Asvestari) and vice chair (Dr. Waldemar Kulig) and welcomed two new members, Dr. Dimitrios Irodotou, and Amina Djurabekova. We initiated the planning of the upcoming Department Christmas coffee event, and also discussed upon a list of future events focusing this year both on our regular fun activities and on enabling discussion on wellbeing matters, in particular with focus on the career development of early career staff.
3.11.2022
- Call for getting more members
- Department's Christmas coffee event
- Code of conduct implementation plan updates
The PhysHIP wellbeing group met to discuss two main pressing topics for this year, the Department's Christmas coffee details and the implementation plan of the Code of Conduct. We initiated the meeting with discussing shortly how to invite more members to the board. The final conclusion was that the chair would write an advertising email to the staff and also try to introduce the wellbeing board during our social events. Some of the details (date, time, budget, activities) of the Department's Christmas coffee event were discussed. At the end, we talked about what kind of things could be added to the implementation plan.
7.12.2022
- Updating the document for implementation to code of conduct
- Website maintenance and updates
- Event planning
- Other matters
During this group meeting we discussed the sections and details of a document we are preparing which will be a practical implementation of the code of conduct. We considered additions and other sections. We also discussed about our wiki page and the necessary maintenance it requires. We already divided small tasks. We agreed that bigger updates will be made to the architecture of the wiki pages in spring. During that update we are considering on developing and including infographics. We also reflected on the Department of Physics and HIP Christmas coffee which we organised. Laura will share a short story about it on our events wiki page. We pre-agreed on our spring activities and events. Waldemar announced to the group of his intention to depart at the start of the year. We thanked him for his many years of service.
2.2.2023
- Planning of the February event.
- Wellbeing survey – advertising and follow up event.
- Implementation to code of conduct – document’s final development.
- Other matters
We welcomed David to our group. We discussed the details and initiated the planning of our first event for the year 2023. The focus of this event will be to bring together the postdoctoral researchers and other early career scientists from our community and the Department Heads and Union representatives, to discuss the issues that affect the wellbeing of postdocs and discuss on actions already being taken or that need to be taken in the future to improve that. We discussed about the upcoming nationwide wellbeing survey for university employees that is going to take place this spring. We considered how to encourage our colleagues from the Department and HIP to participate and explain things that have improved and things that can still be improved. We also discussed about hosting the post survey event to convey the results to our colleagues and to initiate discussions upon these results.