Office for Faculty Affairs

Professorships are the foundation of ETH Zurich. In the service of society, to meet the global challenges of our age, they create knowledge, develop technologies and educate the next generation of specialists. As Office for Faculty Affairs, we contribute on behalf of the President of ETH Zurich to attracting the most talented scientists to ETH Zurich and supporting them in their academic development.

Together with the departments and in consultation with the Executive Board, we coordinate ETH Zurich's planning of professorships and support its operational implementation. We support the recruitment of future professors and ensure that the needs of a professorship are optimally matched with the relevant resources. We are the coordination office for budgeting and long-term planning of the basic funding of the departments. We advise and support the departments on strategic academic topics and are the point of contact for professors on academic matters. In this way, we play an active role in helping to shape the long-term development of the university. Centrally organized and connected throughout ETH, we help with our expertise to implement forward-looking and effective solutions in the interests of ETH Zurich and its social responsibility.

 

The unit Consulting for Professors within the Vice President for Personal Development and Leadership is responsible for topics relating to the personal development of professors.

Key topics

The planning of professorships forms a key organisation axis within ETH Zurich, ultimately determining the development of the departmental basic funding, the accommodation requirements and the establishments of scientific platforms and infrastructural facilities. The planning of professorships is therefore strongly grounded within the Executive Board’s business management process.

The basic intention underlying the planning of professorships is determined in the four-year strategies of the departments. The planning is firmly established in the annual dialogues between the Executive Board and the departments and is thus further developed and specified. Its implementation is shaped by the so-called Freigabegespräche between the President and the departments, during which the planned professorships on application of the departments are approved for advertisement.

Considering the teaching requirements as well, each professorship profile is attuned to the current and future challenges of the corresponding speciality.

The Office for Faculty Affairs is the coordination centre for the financial planning and the budgeting of the departments’ basic funding. The funds allocated to a professorship by the President are integrated into the budget of the corresponding department and, after the five-year starting phase, come under the departmental guidelines for the allocation of funds (see departmental rules of procedure).

The basic funding of a department is adapted according to changes in the number of professorships of the corresponding department (for example additional professorships, vacancies, waiver of continuation, etc.).

Professorships which are implemented by means of third-party funding (so-called third-party initial financing) are equal to professorships financed through internal funds in terms of their financial rights and obligations.

Contact

ETH Zurich
Stab Professuren / Office for Faculty Affairs

Rämistrasse 101
8092 Zürich
Switzerland

Team members and their responsibilities

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