Gerwin van der Pol new chair of COR

Van der Pol narrowly won the election from professor of dentistry Cees Kleverlaan. Van der Pol has been a member of the COR for many years. In the previous term, he was elected on a Free List. He is also chairman of the Humanities Faculty Works Council. The election required two rounds. Computer scientist Piet Rodenburg also participated in the first round, but he did not receive enough votes to advance to the second ballot. The rest of the COR’s executive board in the coming years will consist of Cees Kleverlaan (vice-chairman) and two more board members, who will be elected later.

Productive COR chairman

In a short campaign speech prior to the election, the new COR chair announced that he wants to be a “productive COR chair” who wants to stand up for the interests of the UvA (“a good company”), but also for the rights of employees and for the rights and achievements of the COR itself.

The new chair wants to be someone who wants to achieve consensus, both within the council and externally at the time, he said. “We should not think from positions, but from arguments. In the past, we too often dug our heels in. I would rather not have votes within the COR, but convince each other with arguments.” Van der Pol also touched on a number of “big issues” that will (continue to) play a role in the coming years: workload, internationalization and the “extremely weak position” of lecturers.

“But I think the biggest challenge is controlling how things are worked out or implemented at lower levels. Responsibility and initiative need to be lower in the organization, but where is the co-determination? How can abuses be prevented or resolved? Things often go wrong at lower level, without the COR knowing.”

Van der Pol immediately raised an initial concern. Several months ago, the UvA board decided to reduce the hours compensation for COR members and bring it back to the level before the Maagdenhuis occupation. The COR is not amused and wrote a letter to the CvB this week finding this decision unacceptable. The council did its own internal research into the time commitment of COR members, which showed that just to read documents a COR member needs to have a facilitation of 0.4 fte.

From the letter: “The current facilitation of a COR member who is not also a member of the executive board or committee chair is currently still 0.15 fte; according to your intention, this would be scaled back to 0.1 fte, also for committee chairs, and that is therefore completely inadequate given the reading work alone.” Today, Van der Pol added that he finds the current decision of the CvB “completely unmentionable”.

More committees

The COR’s work next year will be divided among four different committees: education & research, finance, accommodation and human resources. If it were up to the new chair, a communication committee would also be added, a committee that could easily be filled with communication professionals, as there will be three of them in the COR in the coming years: Irene Kraal, Sanne Landhuis and Marian Sluijs. A committee on privacy is also being considered.

New electoral system

The COR was elected through a stepped system for the first time this year. Employees voted for candidates from their own faculty for the Faculty Works Council. Then, all those faculty works councils delegate two employees to the COR Previously, there was a combination of a stepped and a directly elected system.

The Central Works Council is the official representation of employees of the university and has the right of consent on the university's budget, among other things.

The COR has the following members for the next three years:

- Rob Huygens (administrative staff and central units)

- Irene Kraal (administrative staff and central units)

- Estela Gonzalez (Faculty of Economics & Business)

- Sanne Landhuis (Faculty of Economics & Business Administration)

- Edward Pasman (Faculty of Medicine)

- Jonneke Bekkenkamp (Faculty of Humanities, until 1 September 2019)

- Elsbeth Brouwer (Faculty of Humanities, from 1 September 2019)

- Gerwin van der Pol (Faculty of Humanities)

- Iris Breetvelt (Faculty of Social and Behavioural Sciences)

- Piet Rodenburg (Faculty of Natural Sciences, Mathematics & Computer Science)

- Taco Walstra (Faculty of Natural Sciences, Mathematics & Computer Science)

- Otto van Tubergen (Faculty of Law)

- Cees Kleverlaan (Faculty of Dentistry)

- Marian Sluijs (Faculty of Dentistry, until 1 September 2019)

- Henk Brand (Faculty of Dentistry, from 1 September 2019)