0830 Arrive at work. Start on overnight e-mails.
0900 Meet the Academic Director of University of Sheffield Enterprise (the Enterprise Zone on Portobello). There is much to discuss as the offer we make to students of enterprise experiences is in transition, as the funding that has supported the Centre for Excellence in the Teaching and Learning of Enterprise over the last five years comes to an end and we move to new structures. The main ambition over the next 12 months is to introduce a generic module in enterprise available to all students on all undergraduate programmes.
1000 Go straight to the Western Bank Library to chair a meeting of the Project Executive Group (PEG) that has been overseeing the significant refurbishment and improvement work that has been going on over the last few months. Those last three words hide one of the frustrations of this project, because it should have been completed early in the New Year. Instead we are still chasing the contractors to complete various outstanding parts of the overall design, and to deal with some of the snagging. I accept that this is a difficult period for the building industry, and some of the sub-contractors have run into financial problems, but one would have expected that there would be more attention to detail and to deadlines in order to remain in the University's good books for possible future contracts. We should have had our last PEG meeting in late January, but we now need more until the project is finally completed to our satisfaction.
1100 Join a team from the outreach and recruitment area of Student Services in a talk being given by Danny Dorling. As a rule we do not make enough use of experts in our acacdemic departments to provide advice or stimulate thinking in various aspects of our cross-university work. Danny has been an adviser to HEFCE over educational attainment and widening participation issues, but has been under-exploited within his own university. It was a pleasure today to hear him give a fascinating talk to staff from Student Services and related areas - and he set out a number of thought-provoking questions for the future of our outreach activities and our engagement with local schools. There are many other people like Danny in this university who could be asked to provide advice to the institution on key issues of internal debate: another that I have called on is Andy Dickerson in Economics - an expert in the UK labour market - who is now providing advice on how the university might respond to proposals to lift or remove the fees cap in the current Browne Review.
Unfortunately I was not able to stay for the question and answer session with Danny Dorling because of:
1200 Meeting of the University Executive Board. In general our meetings alternate between a formal one with a significant agenda and pre-circulated papers, and an informal one which provides the chance for all those present to update the meeting on significant developments in their areas of responsibility. Today was an informal meeting, with a sandwich lunch, although there was one significant issue for discussion in relation to HEFCE's recent invitation of bids for additional student admissions in 2010 in certain subjects. Nevertheless this was one of the shortest UEB meetings I remember, being completed in an hour.
1300 Returned to my room to get on with preparing papers for forthcoming events and meetings, and to deal with e-mails. Among the topics today have been:
- providing a reference for a possible professorial promotion in another university;
- complications relating to the Higher Education Academy meeting that I am part-chairing tomorrow and Thursday: in particular, one of our speakers is stuck in Dubai and there's a question over whether I could present his paper for him. I'm prepared to have a go if necessary.
- issues around the structure of graduation ceremonies;
- the agreement shortly to be signed between the University and the Banco do Santander under which the bank will sponsor a variety of activities.
1500 A 90 minute meeting with the head of the International Exchanges Unit to catch up on a wide variety of issues. We have one of the strongest records of student exchange of any UK university, with around 700 movers (in or out) each year. But it is hard work keeping up with the demands of ever-changing systems. There will be quite a lot of follow-up work emerging from today's discussions.
1630 The discussion over, I get on with sorting out agendas and papers for forthcoming events and bringing the numbers of outstanding e-mails down to manageable levels.
1910 Departure for home.
The evening has also involved about an hour of reading papers for meetings tomorrow (including one I can't attend but for which I will provide e-mailed comments). And then there's been this blog to write.
0900 Meet the Academic Director of University of Sheffield Enterprise (the Enterprise Zone on Portobello). There is much to discuss as the offer we make to students of enterprise experiences is in transition, as the funding that has supported the Centre for Excellence in the Teaching and Learning of Enterprise over the last five years comes to an end and we move to new structures. The main ambition over the next 12 months is to introduce a generic module in enterprise available to all students on all undergraduate programmes.
1000 Go straight to the Western Bank Library to chair a meeting of the Project Executive Group (PEG) that has been overseeing the significant refurbishment and improvement work that has been going on over the last few months. Those last three words hide one of the frustrations of this project, because it should have been completed early in the New Year. Instead we are still chasing the contractors to complete various outstanding parts of the overall design, and to deal with some of the snagging. I accept that this is a difficult period for the building industry, and some of the sub-contractors have run into financial problems, but one would have expected that there would be more attention to detail and to deadlines in order to remain in the University's good books for possible future contracts. We should have had our last PEG meeting in late January, but we now need more until the project is finally completed to our satisfaction.
1100 Join a team from the outreach and recruitment area of Student Services in a talk being given by Danny Dorling. As a rule we do not make enough use of experts in our acacdemic departments to provide advice or stimulate thinking in various aspects of our cross-university work. Danny has been an adviser to HEFCE over educational attainment and widening participation issues, but has been under-exploited within his own university. It was a pleasure today to hear him give a fascinating talk to staff from Student Services and related areas - and he set out a number of thought-provoking questions for the future of our outreach activities and our engagement with local schools. There are many other people like Danny in this university who could be asked to provide advice to the institution on key issues of internal debate: another that I have called on is Andy Dickerson in Economics - an expert in the UK labour market - who is now providing advice on how the university might respond to proposals to lift or remove the fees cap in the current Browne Review.
Unfortunately I was not able to stay for the question and answer session with Danny Dorling because of:
1200 Meeting of the University Executive Board. In general our meetings alternate between a formal one with a significant agenda and pre-circulated papers, and an informal one which provides the chance for all those present to update the meeting on significant developments in their areas of responsibility. Today was an informal meeting, with a sandwich lunch, although there was one significant issue for discussion in relation to HEFCE's recent invitation of bids for additional student admissions in 2010 in certain subjects. Nevertheless this was one of the shortest UEB meetings I remember, being completed in an hour.
1300 Returned to my room to get on with preparing papers for forthcoming events and meetings, and to deal with e-mails. Among the topics today have been:
- providing a reference for a possible professorial promotion in another university;
- complications relating to the Higher Education Academy meeting that I am part-chairing tomorrow and Thursday: in particular, one of our speakers is stuck in Dubai and there's a question over whether I could present his paper for him. I'm prepared to have a go if necessary.
- issues around the structure of graduation ceremonies;
- the agreement shortly to be signed between the University and the Banco do Santander under which the bank will sponsor a variety of activities.
1500 A 90 minute meeting with the head of the International Exchanges Unit to catch up on a wide variety of issues. We have one of the strongest records of student exchange of any UK university, with around 700 movers (in or out) each year. But it is hard work keeping up with the demands of ever-changing systems. There will be quite a lot of follow-up work emerging from today's discussions.
1630 The discussion over, I get on with sorting out agendas and papers for forthcoming events and bringing the numbers of outstanding e-mails down to manageable levels.
1910 Departure for home.
The evening has also involved about an hour of reading papers for meetings tomorrow (including one I can't attend but for which I will provide e-mailed comments). And then there's been this blog to write.
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