Name, title and department:

Poul Houman Andersen, Professor at Aalborg University Business School

Why are you running for the board?

I am standing for the board because I believe that I can help push the board's work in a more employee-friendly direction. It is about thinking of the board's role as more independent from that of the executive board, creating more openness in the organization about decision-making points and giving employees better opportunities to relate to the agenda and decisions. I have several years of experience from board work and have sat on the board with representatives from some of the largest companies in Denmark, including Copenhagen Airport, Denmark National Broadcasting, the Ministry of Economy, and the Danish Defense Agency.

In your view, what is AAU's biggest challenge – and what is the solution to that?

AAU's financial foundation and working conditions are changing extensively in these years and everything indicates that more changes are coming. The three biggest changes I can immediately see are graduate reform, falling youth cohorts and new requirements for the content of educations, which match the changes artificial intelligence and other new technologies bring with them. In the slightly longer term, the discussion of the university's role in helping to solve the basic societal challenges is important. I believe that AAU fundamentally has the right focus on problem-oriented learning but must revisit these values to ensure our distinctiveness and differentiation potential. It is not the task to be as similar as possible to the other universities!

Why should one vote for you in the board election?

A vote for me is a vote to ensure more employee influence through a stronger and more independent board, to ask critical questions about the redistribution mechanisms in the current budget model, which starve SSH, to work for fewer closed items on the board's agenda and to open for increased dialogue between employees and me as board representative.