Professor Keller’s request for a one-year extension beyond normal retirement age resulted in a tie vote in her institute

Based on new rules (Link) ETH professors potentially can stay beyond their normal retirement age. At this point not fully clear what the final criteria will be for an extension of a professor at ETH. In the past, this was possible based on performance, or general service / management roles, but there has been limited transparency in the process. Some information is available on the ETH supervisory board (ETH Rat, external pagelinkcall_made, and new and retired professors external pagelinkcall_made).

Prof. Keller informed her department and ETH leadership in November 2020 that she would like to extend her retirement by one year. The physics department then created new rules, instated March 2021 (link). During her official emeritus review on 12. Nov. 2021, Prof. Keller was informed to follow the new rule and submit a formal request first to the institute of quantum electronics (IQE, link) and then to the department (D-PHYS, link).

The new rule requires the following steps for an extension of the retirement age in the physics department (link and Downloaddownload (PDF, 61 KB)vertical_align_bottom), as follows:

For a delay of the retirement age, the proposal (that includes a plan concerning resources) should be made by the institute. It must be first approved by the Ausschuss [i.e. the leadership committee in the physics department] (for the resources) before the draft of a request to the ETH President, that includes the plans concerning the resources, is voted on by the PK.
Associate the continuation beyond retirement age to strong requirements in excellence and added value for the institution.

Prof. Keller submitted her request for a one-year extension again according to these new rules, first on 15. Nov. 2021, followed with a more detailed justification on 1. Dec. 2021 (Downloaddownload (PDF, 2.4 MB)vertical_align_bottom). Of the 10 eligible voting members of the IQE, the vote was four in favor, four against, and two abstain.

Prior to the vote, Prof. Keller explicitly pointed out that approval should be based on her performance and excellence only, allowing her group to better finalize their research and PhD supervision based on the ongoing second ERC advanced grant and an excellence grant from the Swiss National Science Foundation. Even with institute and departmental approval, financial support from the ETH administration would still be required. A justification for the vote was requested, but none was supplied.

The IQE institute link did not submit a department request for her extension based on the tie vote. It is worth noting that additional new requirements such as the space-time integral were already accepted within the IQE, resulting in Prof. Keller giving up her office (link) and dismantling the Attoclock lab (link).

Some thoughts and comments on the above process. First, the rules as setup and practiced allow a simple majority vote within the institute to apparently allow the department to avoid taking any further action including considering her follow-on request submitted to the department, strictly following the new one-page rule which states “the proposal (that includes a plan concerning resources) should be made by the institute” to the department.

Secondly, the department’s new rules appear to benefit research groups that have accumulated substantial financial – and space-related – reserves. ETH leadership, however, has supported and even requested that research groups and departments – do not accumulate large reserve resources (very often funded of course from public money). Over the last 28 years, Prof. Keller has effectively managed and used the group’s research resources focused on education (with an exceptionally high number of PhD students – expected to be 101 by the end of her ETH career), many high impact research results – as recognized by the last departmental external evaluation in 2020, and successful industrial transfer – as recognized for example by the European Innovation Award (link).

Unsurprisingly, the ULP group has not accumulated the financial reserves to be able to completely fulfill the “budget-time integral” (as explained here) for a one-year extension, even though ongoing research projects would cover the main costs of PhD students required. ETH Leadership would ultimately have to approve the extension and additional costs which seems they have done in the past but with limited transparency (see justification letter above).

This may raise a number of questions about best practices in academic governance – should colleagues be evaluating and voting on the excellence – and resources – of their other colleagues within their own institute and department?

How should group and departmental resources be best managed to maximize results and performance aligned with the goals of ETH – excellence in education and excellence in research?

How can we effectively separate autonomy of research (necessary!) with autonomy of management (subject to various pitfalls even from the best academics)?

As it currently stands, Prof. Keller is currently stuck with her request for an extension, regardless of the potential positive impacts and her track record of achievements, after being excluded from any leadership position within the department for more than the last 10 years.