Presidents Mari Walls and Markku Lahtinen: Next year we will be more than the sum of our parts

The most multidisciplinary and second largest university community in Finland will be created when Tampere University of Technology and the University of Tampere are merged to establish the new foundation-based Tampere University, which will also be the majority shareholder of Tampere University of Applied Sciences.  Our new community will be made up of 30,000 students and 4,400 employees.

The process to establish the new university community was launched back in spring 2014, when Stig Gustavson was commissioned by the three higher education institutions to identify areas where they could establish a leading international reputation and to determine the necessary steps to achieve this vision. Later on, a committee comprising Vice Presidents continued Gustavson’s work. After reviewing the committee’s report, the respective Boards of the higher education institutions decided to continue the collaborative process, now dubbed as “Tampere3”. The bills that sealed that establishment of the new university community were presented for debate before the Finnish Parliament in June 2017.  The bills were passed and ratified in December 2017.

Now the launch of our new community is finally approaching. The foundation-based Tampere University and the Tampere university community that the new University forms with TAMK will begin their operations on 1 January 2019.  An incredible amount of exceptional work has been done by hundreds and hundreds of people both within and outside of our university community. The launch of the new University and university community will become immediately visible at the turn of the year, especially in our community-wide nomenclature. Our new community-wide website is currently taking shape along with our visual branding and logo. Our website and email addresses end with tuni.fi, which comes from the words Tampere Universities.  

Over the next couple of years, we will continue our ambitious work to lay a solid foundation for our new university community. We will also have our sights firmly focused outside of our community with the aim of fostering close stakeholder relations and partnerships.

This multidisciplinary union of strong higher education institutions is founded on a solid basis, with the cornerstones being the expertise and excellent reputation of the institutions. We already have a forward-looking strategy that builds on our community’s strengths as well as research and education strategies that are all the result of extensive preparations involving broad representation of the members of our community. Together we are more than the sum of our parts and will build an attractive university community with an international reach.

As we near the end of the year, we want to thank all the members of our university community as well as our stakeholders for their excellent work and wish them happy holidays. We hope you stay excited about building our new community!

Presidents
Mari Walls, Tampere University
Markku Lahtinen, Tampere University of Applied Sciences