Forum Avancez is now being launched, an initiative aimed at strengthening the academic environment among students and staff at Chalmers.
“Academia is built on the idea of people exchanging thoughts and ideas to advance humanity and knowledge,” says President Martin Nilsson Jacobi, who is behind the initiative.
The idea behind Forum Avancez is to create meeting places for ideas and people from across the university, both students and staff, where different approaches to questions can be explored and tested against one another without there necessarily being an obvious answer.
“A university can bring people together and thereby facilitate the exchange of ideas and thoughts. At leading universities, this is a very vibrant culture, a lifeblood that means nothing is taken for granted and that there is constant discussion and questioning,” says Martin Nilsson Jacobi.
He believes that such an environment can enrich discussions at Chalmers by creating more room for encounters between different subject areas and perspectives. This can open up new questions and bring more perspectives to conversations that are already taking place.
Broadening these perspectives is key if Chalmers is to achieve its goal of becoming a world-class university of technology, particularly given the rapid developments taking place around us.
“I believe that interpersonal exchange will become especially important as AI makes its way into more aspects of our professional and private lives. We will need to meet face to face and talk to one another,” says Martin Nilsson Jacobi.
Forum Avancez will therefore be an important part of broadening the exchange of ideas on campus.
The first two events will take place shortly
The first event, on 17 November in the Volvo foyer at the Student Union Building, will feature Vice President for Education Jörgen Blennow and Filip Djokic from the Chalmers Student Union. They will invite the audience to take part in an interactive discussion on whether engineering education is keeping pace with a changing world.
On 2 December, Martin Nilsson Jacobi will meet former Minister for Education Mats Persson in RunAn to discuss the expectations and demands that Chalmers of the future will face, followed by a panel discussion.
Welcome to register via the links above!