Program leadership from a Nordic perspective - Managing education development

Paper in proceeding, 2012

Nordic Five Tech (N5T) is a strategic alliance between five technical universities in Denmark, Finland, Norway and Sweden. The overall aim is to “utilize shared and complementary strengths and create synergy within education, research and innovation”. In this paper we focus on university educational development issues by investigating the program leadership at five Nordic technical universities. Specifically, the paper compares definitions, views and experiences of education leadership in the Nordic Five Tech (N5T) universities. The paper does this by, first, reviewing the definitions of roles and responsibilities for program directors at each university, and second, by presenting results from a survey carried out in March 2012 among program directors at the N5T universities. Based on this data, we analyze how program directors experience their role, their possibilities to lead, and their opportunities of learning to lead. How is time for reflection and development as leaders handled at the different universities? The paper goes on to consider what impact the mandate of the leadership role has on the possibilities for developing educational programs. For instance, how can program directors ensure that learning objectives concerning generic skills and abilities are reached? How can program directors drive implementation of integrative and value-oriented topics such as sustainable development, innovation and entrepreneurship?