Dear colleagues and students,
For the past year, I have had the privilege of meeting with you to understand your daily realities, your dedication to your professions, and to take full measure of the challenges facing our University.
Running a rectoral campaign and the Social Sciences and Humanities Vice-Rectorate simultaneously was intense and enriching.
Three values guide my programme:
Respect: Directly confronting problems: excessive workloads, lack of resources, cumbersome administration and decision-making, unclear roles, student precarity, and educational funding. Respecting you and ourselves means eagerly coming up with concrete responses and evaluating their effects.
Unity: Today UCLouvain has a new face. We need to redefine its vision and values through a unifying and inspiring plan. A great deal of potential remains to be tapped within and between sectors, campuses, and entities; many steps can be taken to more effectively support campuses and mobility.
Action: My programme proposes immediate action: fighting violence and discrimination, reconciling private and professional life, welcoming diversity, transitioning ecologically, providing human resources and material support for research, driving educational innovation, promoting languages and continuing education.
Priority measures include governance, making education more accessible, increasing staffing levels, making promotion procedures more transparent, assessing academic workloads, granting sabbaticals genuinely free of work duties, creating a fund to support the bridging of research contracts, aligning resources for PhD students, drafting a master plan for large equipment, and setting up two pro-rectorates (DEI-Respect; university hospitals).
If you place your trust in me, I will be a rector who is in touch with your daily reality, accessible, and determined to fulfil my mandate. I will strive to bring people together, and I will represent our University with pride.
Yours sincerely,
Geneviève Schamps