Annual report
2009
1 General
In recent years, the Faculty of Law (FL) has developed into a highly international law faculty. Many of our students and staff are of nationalities other than Dutch. Currently, a good 20% of the students come from abroad, and of the new student intake this number stands at approximately 30%. An important reason for this is the fact that the faculty has been offering a complete English bachelor’s programme since 2006/07. Further, international employees make up nearly 40% of the academic staff, and most of the new PhD candidates are also from abroad.
In 2009, the faculty strategy was based on the agreements made with the Executive Board and laid down in the Balanced Score Card. These agreements form the guiding points of departure for the faculty.
The student intake of both the bachelor’s and master’s programmes has substantially increased, and in fact exceeded the set targets in 2009. What’s more, the bachelor’s intake figure does not include those students who enrolled in Hasselt, where the FL is responsible for 40% of the bachelor's programme. The number of PhD defences in 2009 narrowly missed the target of 15 per year, but we expect to make up for this in 2010, ensuring that the annual target will be achieved eventually.
Unfortunately, the faculty’s direct government funding is still not enough to finance the necessary academic capacity; the low student intake of the bachelor’s programme in 2005 is still playing a part in this. However, since 2005 the student intake has gradually increased.
As a result, the academic as well as administrative and support staff are finding themselves placed under too much work pressure, as the staff numbers cannot be increase at the required pace due to the lack of funding. By occasionally hiring employees for on fixed-term contracts and/or via InterUM, we are trying to keep the workloads at an acceptable level. As of 2010, we expect the faculty to have more financial leeway, so that we can find a structural solution for this problem and create more room for extra investments.
2 Education and students
Education
In the 2009 review year, the implementation of the earlier bachelor's programme review was completed. We also began reviewing the English-language master’s programmes, with the aim of making the international profile of these programmes clearer while at the same time using our limited capacity as efficiently as possible. Further, a proposal has been developed for the setup of two different specialisations in the Globalisation and Law master’s programme. Each of these specialisations is to have a clear focus, namely ‘Human Rights’ and ‘Corporate and Commercial Law’. The programmes will be further refined in 2010. A proposal has also been developed for an English variant of the Forensics, Criminology and Administration of Justice master’s programme.
Once again, our study programmes proved to be excellent preparation for professional legal practice: a team of master’s students from the FL qualified for the international finals of the International Trade Law Moot Court in Taiwan (and eventually finished in third place). At the Philip Jessup International Law Moot Court, our students achieved second place in the national competition round. In addition, a team from Maastricht again got through to the finals of the International Client Counseling Competition (ICCC), which took place in Las Vegas this year.
In the summer of 2009, the first group of students graduated from the English-language track of the European Law School bachelor’s programme. Of this first group, 48% attained their diploma within three years, which is a fantastic result. However, taking all of the study programmes into account, the faculty is not happy with the study progress and overall completion rates. For this reason, several measures were taken during the review year, such as the offer of study skills training at the start of the programme; the possibility of undertaking a self-assessment to gain more insight into one’s own planning skills, motivation and learning strategies; and a pilot with Academic Advising. International students are offered skills training before they start their master's programme. And the faculty regularly meets with study associations to discuss their role in student life at the FL.
A dedicated work group is currently considering additional faculty measures to further improve the programme completion rates. To that end, the current standardisation of Binding Study Advice is also a point of attention. It is expected that the cutbacks will have a positive influence on the completion rates.
In 2009, the activities in Asia were continued on several fronts. For instance, the China-EU School of Law (CESL), in which our faculty participates, was officially opened. Further, a faculty delegation managed to secure contracts with several prestigious Chinese universities, e.g. in the area of student exchange. Also, a proposal was developed for an inter-faculty master’s programme called EurAsion Studies. With these activities, the faculty hopes to stimulate the external intake for the master's programmes.
In the bachelor’s programmes, the English variant of the European Law School has proven to be highly appealing, including to international students. The faculty would like to ensure that the backgrounds of the students in this programme remain as diverse as possible.
The programme offered jointly with Hasselt once again attracted a great number of first-year students in September 2009.
Also in 2009, preperations started for the re-accredition of nearly all programmes scheduled for 2010 (with one exception; the IPKM programme that started in 2009). The faculty continually evaluates all blocks via IWIO. From these evaluations, it can be concluded that the quality of the academic programmes is improving and that the study load for students stands at an acceptable level.
As expected, the professional education courses saw problems during the review year due to the credit crisis. Because of this, the extremely high number of students in 2008 could not be achieved in 2009. However, a respectable number of participants (namely, 749) still attended the courses, all of which were evaluated as good to very good. The aim for 2010 is to attract at least 750 participants for these courses.
Under the name ‘Forum Romanum’, the FL and the Maastricht and Roermond courts and prosecution offices have intensified their collaboration. This collaboration should make it possible for all parties to benefit from one another’s expertise and knowledge. This will involve working together on courses, conferences, intership opportunities, activities, trial courts, and so on.
Students
In 2009, students also contributed to the faculty through their active input in the Faculty Council, Faculty Board and various other committees. The student council, in which students regularly discuss the various faculty agenda items, plays a key role in this regard. The different changes within the faculty (renovations, implementation of a new scheduling and registration system, etc.) demanded a great deal of flexibility from the students, who generally responded in a positive and understanding manner.
The faculty has been offering a bachelor’s honours programme for several years now. In 2008/09, 11 second-year and 6 third-year students participated in this two-year programme.
In the 2009/10 academic year, the activities for excellent bachelor’s students were extended with the possibility of participating in the MARBLE project. There is now also a master’s honours programme, which focuses on research and the possibility of continuing on at the faculty with a PhD programme.
As part of the ‘selection and matching’ project, a selection instrument has been developed for students who do not have a legal background but who would like to enroll in one of our law master's programmes. This instrument consists of a knowledge test, case studies and a personality test. The knowledge test and the case studies in particular play an important role in selecting the students. The results indicate that those students who were selected for the 2007/08 and 2008/09 academic years achieved comparable, if not better, results than the other students.
In 2008/09, 71 exchange students spent one or two semesters at one of our partner universities. Of these students, 49 remained in Europe while 22 went to one of our non-European partners (in the USA, Canada, China, Singapore, Australia and South Africa). On average, they completed courses with a study load of 26.3 credits.
Another 18 students undertook an internship abroad. Over half of these (10) stayed in Europe, while the remainder (8) did their internship in various places outside of Europe (Brasil, USA, Ivory Coast, Curaçao). The interships generally run for one block period and have a study load of 12 credits.
3 Research and knowledge valorisation
Research programming
The research conducted at the faculty is internationally oriented. In line with UM's strategic objective ‘Focus and Mass’, two research themes have been formulated:
1. Ius Commune (consisting of a private and public law component), and
2. Human Rights (focusing on international human rights and criminal law).
These themes encompass the faculty’s input into the research programmes of the inter-university Ius Commune and Human Rights research schools. As of 2008, a small group of researchers has been working outside these two research schools; this group works within the Maastricht Forensic Institute (tMFI), and together with the Faculty of Psychology and Neuroscience is responsible for setting up a new research programme.
Some of the research schools’ programme components are organised in research institutes within the faculty: the Centre for Human Rights, the Institute for Transnational Legal Research (Metro), the Institute for Globalisation and International Regulation (IGIR), the Montesquieu Institute Maastricht, and the Institute for Corporate Law, Governance and Innovation policies (ICGI), which was established in 2009.
External evaluations
The Ius Commune Research School received a good assessment from ECOS-KNAW in 2009 and was reaccredited for another six years. Meanwhile, the Human Rights Research School received a peer review visit (report to follow). As part of the national evaluation of legal research, additional self-evaluations were set up for Maastricht's contribution to the programmes of the research schools and explained to the national visitation committee. The evaluations confirm that our collaboration in the inter-faculty research groups will benefit both the quality and the output of the FL’s research. The faculty is therefore confident about the outcome of the visitation committee’s report.
PhD completion rate
Since 2009, the Maastricht Graduate School of Law has played an important role in the recruitment, supervision and education of PhD candidates, as well as in the organisation of the Master’s Honours Research Track. This is an addition to the regular honours track and the two-year master's programmes, in which talented students have the chance to get acquainted with faculty’s research themes and research skills. In 2009, 12 PhD candidates attained their degrees. The average duration for completing the doctorate by the 10 internal candidates was slightly higher than that of 2008, due to several cases of pregnancy leave (6.1 as opposed to 5 years), and also slightly higher than the national average for law faculties (5.6 years).
At the end of 2009, 53 PhD candidates (50.78 fte) were in employment at the university. The intake of 10 PhD candidates in 2009 comprised 5 externally funded projects and 5 projects entered into internal and external competition, where lecturers and external candidates submitted their own research proposals.
Research funding and knowledge valorisation
The faculty institutes and the Graduate School are important entities when it comes to profiling the faculty’s research spearheads, securing projects financed by indirect government and contract research funds, and translating legal research into governmental and societal sub fields. In 2009, the faculty incentive policy was updated in view of the challenging objectives that were agreed upon in terms of indirect government and contract research funds and PhD defences.
The faculty Science Committee and subsidy adviser play an important role in improving the research proposals. For NWO applications, an internal procedure has been set up in which the Science Committee has to approve proposals before they can be submitted to the NWO. In 2009, this resulted in 8 applications for the MagW Open Competition (of which 3 made it to the final evaluation round) and 1 Vidi application. The past year was very succesful for indirect government funding: we received funds for three PhD projects, a Veni grant and a number of A-ranked proposals. In January 2010, 6 Veni applications for the NWO’s ‘Renewal Impulse’ (Vernieuwingsimpuls) were submitted after an intensive training and coaching procedure.
4 Academic development and management
Staff
In 2009, the number of academic staff rose from 142.8 to 165 fte; an increase of over 15%. In the past years, the number of PhD candidates has also increased significantly. This rise is mainly intended to help increase the number of PhD defences. Another reason for the increase in ftes is the constant growth of the service education, for which extra academic staff must be appointed, and the joint study programme with Hasselt, which has been attracting a lot more students than anticipated. Many new staff members with nationalities other than Dutch have been appointed: nearly 40% of the academic staff now come from abroad. The number of administrative and support staff, on the other hand, remained stable in 2009. This means that the workload for these staff members has increased, due to the growing number of students and other staff members.
Based on the talent policy that was established throughout UM in 2009, the faculty’s career policy for academic staff has been further refined. In order to effectively execute the UM memo ‘Mobilising minds’, more room must be made to attract new and retain existing talent. A policy has been developed aimed at fostering a better progression up the academic ladder from lecturer to professor.
Those who do not have the potential to move up to a higher academic position will not be given a fixed contract as a lecturer, senior lecturer or professor. In these cases, other career changes will be discussed with the individuals involved. Fixed appointments, in other words, will only be offered if there is a realistic expectation that the scholar has the potential to move on to a higher position. In this way, we try to prevent staff members from getting stuck somewhere on the way to professor and occupying a position for longer than is necessary.
All academic appointments are made in tenure tracks. To better guide academic staff in their development, appointment requirements were set up per academic position and level (e.g. UD 2, UD 1) in 2009. Currently, the faculty is also contemplating the career policy (and appointment criteria) for tutors. This decision-making process will be completed in early 2010.
In 2009, a total of 21 staff members were recruited from abroad, an increase from 13 in 2008. The new international staff members received extra support, including a personal explanation of life in Maastricht and the various terms of employment within UM, which they highly appreciated. In total, 39 new people joined the faculty in 2009, while 8 people left.
As in previous years, staff took part in an annual appraisal and/or assessment interview in 2009. A fixed agenda item during these meetings is explicit discussion of the employee’s career ambitions. Occasionally, these meetings resulted in staff members opting to seek advice at the university’s Staff Career Counselling Services (LCM).
Interested lecturers had the opportunity to experiment with ‘function contracts’ in 2009, but only one lecturer volunteered to do so. Other lecturers strictly saw these contracts as a formalisation of the current situation: clear performance agreements already exist for the tenure tracks, and the assessment of these agreements is based on actual performance rather than on presence.
The age composition among staff remained stable in 2009: 5% of the staff is older than 60, while 22% is aged between 50 and 60. The group of older staff members is slowly increasing, which has led to discussions about a specific policy for older staff within the faculty.
The sickness absence in 2009 was lower than in previous years, amounting to 3.23%.
Organisation and collaboration
In 2009, renovation activities were constantly underway in the faculty building. Along with the regular upgrade in 2009, a common room was installed as a meeting place where students can study and hold discussions together. A new computer lab was also set up. The renovations will be completed in the first half of 2010.
These renovation activities meant that the working conditions for staff in 2009 were not always pleasant. Alternative workplaces were temporarily set up for certain staff, or agreements were made on working from home. Due to these activities, the planned risk inventorisation and evaluation were postponed to February 2010.
Most of the staff are now working with a TC or PC using the Athena Desktop concept. However, the further rollout of Athena Desktop has been delayed. This is partly due to the discussions about local support and the necessary collaboration between the university’s ICTS and the faculty ICT staff.
In 2009, a new registration and scheduling system was also introduced throughout UM. This unfortunately suffered from serious implementation problems. Thanks to the efforts of the staff, particularly those in the Registration Office, as well as through the hiring of external experts and temporary staff, the consequences for staff and students remained relatively acceptable. The system is still not completely stable, however, and the faculty is faced with new surprises on a daily basis.
