#1
2,000 students from all around the world USBE is home to more than 2,000 students from around the world. The school offers education at first-, second- and third-cycle levels, and there are a number of internationally established research environments. Operations are carried out within three departments – business administration, economics and statistics – all of which have an international character. At the Department of Business Administration, comprising 80 faculty and administrators, research and teaching is performed within the sub-disciplines of Accounting, Entrepreneurship, Finance, Management and Marketing. Across these disciplines, strong research forms two research profiles: Projects, Innovations and Networks (PIN), and the Research Institute for Sustainability and Ethics in Business (RiseB). Researchers from the department also lead the international Sustainable Investments Research Platform (SIRP).
Many exchange students The department hosts four 4-year programmes resulting in a degree of Master of Science in Business and Economics and five master’s programmes. It is also a partner in the Master’s Program in Strategic Project Management, an Erasmus Mundus programme. The education is international, and all courses at second-cycle level, most courses during the third year and the 4-year International Business Program are taught in English. The broad range of courses held in English annually attracts a large number of exchange students. In addition to its own programmes, the department is involved in a large number of other first-cycle programmes at Umeå University. The department actively engages in corporate and community collaboration, for example in the form of commissioned education, joint research projects, internships and via the Industrial Doctoral School for Research and Innovation. The department also has extensive experience from strategic development programmes focusing on SMEs and other organisations.
A global meeting place Today, the Department of Economics is a meeting place for researchers and students from Asia, Africa, North America and Europe. From autumn 2012 onwards, the entire course offering can be studied in English. International students and 04
faculty members can be found at all levels. The department has also become increasingly international as a workplace. Of the fifty or so employees connected to the department, more than a quarter come from outside the Nordic region. As a result, English is the most commonly used language. Research is carried out within several of the main fields of Economics. The key areas are Public Economics (including issues relating to taxation, public procurement, and municipal and regional aspects), Environmental and Resource Economics (including the Centre for Environmental and Resource Economics, CERE, which was created by the Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences and Umeå University), Labour Economics and Econometrics.
Jessica Eriksson, Associate Head of Department, Business Administration.
Developing new statistical methods The staff at the department of Statistics includes about 30 persons who work with teaching, research and collaboration. The aim of the department, which celebrates its 50th anniversary this year, is to equip students with both basic and more in-depth statistical knowledge. It is therefore of great value that those who work at the department today have an interest in both teaching and research. This means that students can benefit from high quality teaching provided by committed faculty members with a close link to the research being carried out within the subject. The main focus of the department’s research is the development of new statistical methods that are required in order to analyse register data, which is often collected over time. Most of those who work at the department collaborate with national and international researchers in other disciplines, such as Demographics, Economics, Medicine, Psychology and Forestry, and this collaboration is of great importance to the department. One form of collaboration is throught consulting which often leads to new ventures of teaching new student groups and initiate new research projects, both within and outside the university.
Kenneth Backlund, Associate Head of Department, Economics.
Ingrid Svensson, Associate Head of Department, Statistics.