Monday 27th February 2012 - Student Union elections

It's election time in the Students' Union.  A rash of coloured posters has burst out all over the concourse in front of the Arts Tower, and especially in the spaces around the Union Building.  The holdres of the eight sabbatical posts will be announced late on Thursday evening.  For the moment canvassing is in full swing.  In some ways it seems unsubtle - almost all the posters are designed simply to try to place the candidate's name, with nothing about what their policy proposals actually are.  But there is perhaps an inevitability about this - two weeks ago most of the candidates were unknown to almost everybody except their circle of friends (who are now drummed into action as key election agents and supporters).  There are rarely any 'party machines' or particular lobby groups standing.  And this in my view gives strength to the democratic process in the Union because it tends to produce winners who are more broadly representative of students across the unviersity, rather than owing their election to a particular cadre.

In many years there are a series of joke candidates, but that doesn't seem to be the case in 2012.  But what has impressed me in the past has been that amongst all the myriad candidates standing thsoe who emerge as winners are almost invariably excellent student representatives.  And they almost always then gell as a team despite the fact that prior to their election they probably had never met each other.  In only one year since I have been PVC have I seen an officer team fall apart, and in only one other year have I seen a major split develop marginalising one officer against the other eight. In both of those years there were officers who had been elected with the support of what I have called 'party machines'.

This year there could be some surprises.  The number of candidates standing is the second highest ever.  And the vagaries of the transferable vote system used in the Union means that second, third and fourth preferences will take on great significance in the decision on a number of the posts.

But there are two surprises that I would really like to see - despite the fact that I have to be completely non-partisan!  Firstly, I would be delighted if we saw the election of a Chinese student to any position - and this year we do have Chinese candidates.  That's great, because until now the large number of Chinese students have been reluctant to come forward and stand for office.  But secondly what I would REALLY welcome would be the election of a woman as President of the Union.  I have been a PVC since 2004 and in the whole of that period there has never been a woman in charge of the Union.  So I'll be looking at the results at the end of this week with great interest.

Tuesday 21st February 2012 - Making meetings think creatively

Today I have been involved in two discussions. In fact, both of them could be described as discussions about discussions. Both were about gaining the space to think about some of the bigger issues affecting us.  The question is how to gain the space to think about these matters that go beyond the everyday concerns that take up most people's regular hours. And a related question is how to construct agendas that open up the possibilities of thinking differently.

This morning we had one of the regular (although not frequent) meetings labelled UEB-HoDs.  These involve the members of the University's Executive Board, along with the heads of academic departments, certain key faculty figures such as the Directors of Research and Innovation, Learning and Teaching, and Operations, and the heads of professional services departments. Much of the discussion was around the value of our meetings, and the sorts of topics that ought to be covered.     When  I started out as a PVC these meetings had a Politburo style - in others words, the executive sat in a long line facing everyone else and the whole meeting progressed through statements from members of the executive followed by questions from 'the floor'.  I take the credit for getting the format changed so that we all now sit around round tables - but the spirit of the executive passing out information to the others is still too prevalent,in my opinion.  Today, through discussions at each table, we started to get to the view that these meetings ought to be two way channels of communication whereby all those present can put forward ideas for further discussion at the Executive  Board, rather than just being receivers of information.

This evening I had arranged a dinner for the Faculty Directors of Learning and Teaching, and the head of Learning and Teaching Services, with the aim of moving away from the run of the mill business that we often discuss and to brainstorm very large scale changes that the university might want to make over the next few years in its teaching provision.  But with such a discussion there was a need to define some sort of agenda.  The Head of LeTS and I ended up by specifying four possible avenues for major change in order to start the discussion going.  Actually once tongues had been loosened I sat back and said very little for the first 30 minutes while others present played with ideas.

But weeks will now go by without any real opportunity to take up the big ideas from either of today's meetings.  Should we reserve one day a month to move away from the everyday and consider the bigger picture?  And in doing so how should we ensure that we generate genuine discussion and not just one way communication? Sometimes it's as hard to get these things right with colleagues across the institution as it is to facilitate optimum levels of discussion in student seminars.

This could get a little convoluted, so I'll tell you at the outset that this blog is really about the advantages of hard copy newsletters.

On Friday evening I met up with 6 other men who had been at secondary school with me.  For one of them it was the first time we had met in nearly 40 years.  Of the seven of us, two had gone into private sector employment: they were both now fully retired after getting generous payoffs from their firms sometime before their expected retirement ages.  The other five had gone into public sector activities - three lecturing in universities, one as a consultant cardiologist, and one as a social worker.  One of the university lecturers had retired but the others of us were all still in employment.  The person who had retired had actually taken voluntary severance as part of Sheffield's VSS scheme of 3 years ago.  As we sat in a French restaurant in Bow Street, London (the school we had attended was in London so it seemed only fitting that we should all meet up there) he reminded me of how he had found out that he and I were working for the same institution.

When the Octagon Centre opened, with a great fanfare, a lot was made of the versatility of the venue and of the huge variety of events that were scheduled to take place there: a significant part of the university's monthly newsletter was devoted to the story.  Something about the list of events annoyed me, and I wrote a letter to the editor, which was duly published, arguing that a civilised institution such as Sheffield University should not be condoning boxing dinners on its premises. My letter provoked a response from the then manager of the Octagon, effectively arguing that he would accept any booking that paid.  And there was then a further flurry of correspondence, almost unanimously taking my view.  It was my letter in the newsletter that had alerted my old school friend that he and I were now working in the same university.  It was also what first brought me some recognition (notoriety?) within the institution.

That was a period when a copy of the university newsletter was placed in every staff pigeonhole and in every office and workshop.  It was well-read and coffee conversations revolved around the stories in it.  The 1st April edition was eagerly awaited - at least, after the first 'special' edition when a number of people did actually fall for the line that the university was about to insist that all its staff wore a distinctive uniform.  In other years there was a report on the plans for a chair lift to get people across the ring road (more needed now than it was when the story was written), and the relandscaping of the Brook Hill roundabout as the 'Magic Roundabouit.'   The hard copy newsletter brought everyone together and created a sense of community - everyone read the same material.

Of course, that was before the internet and the delivery of information and news via e-mails.  Today I receive a couple of dozen newsletters in various ways.  I do read 'Overview' - the replacement of the old hard copy edition.  But the vast majority of e-mail newsletters I receive just get filed on one side to be read later - but never are.  The only one I really read is Learning and Teaching News (hard copy).  Readers may say that these are the reflections of someone who has been around rather too long, and who doesn't appreciate the advantages of modern technology.  But I am writing this in uSpace.  I use MOLE2 in my teaching.  I do a lot of feedback work with students via SurveyMonkey.  I read others' blogs, and follow message trails.  It's just that none of these means of communication creates such a wide sense of community and belonging as a booklet in everyone's pigeonhole that everyone then reads and talks about with others.

I will close with a challenge.  When I was promoted to a chair the next newsletter had a photo of all the new chairholders and a few words about each of them.  For the following month or so as I went around the university many people stopped me to offer me congratulations.  My challenge to others is to name those in the university who were promoted to chairs a month ago: I suspect that even with modern means of communication very few have much idea of who to congratulate.

But I am prepared to be dismissed as a communications Luddite and out of touch with how others use contemporary means of messaging!