Despite the fact that my period of service as a Deputy Vice-Chancellor is drawing rapidly to a close, my job is still throwing up fascinating new experiences. I am currently on the last sensible train back from London to Sheffield after a fantastic new event in London.
This has been an alumni event, but with a difference. At the end I walked out with an alumnus who was setting off from the venue near Blackfriars to return to his office at Canary Wharf, to pick up his car, to drive out into Kent. "I wouldn't normally be interested in an alumni event, but this seemed different" he said as we walked along. Just before I left another alumnus, a very significant figure in the commercial world, had complemented me on my welcome speech and said he felt quite emotional about it because he could relate exactly to what we were doing - and how proud he was that the University of Sheffield was doing it. So what was it?
Students from 'widening participation' backgrounds often feel daunted about applying to enter the labour market. From households with no experience of higher education, and perhaps no one in the family in a profession, they lack confidence about what business, commerce, and the whole world of 'city jobs' consists of. So today my colleagues have taken 40 students from such backgrounds and given them a day in the city of London. They have visited 4 city firms, in very different sectors, and had the chance to quiz employees about what their jobs are like. They have met senior managers and learned about their career trajectories. And those who have been hosting them have been Sheffield alumni.
Where I came in was to act as 'host' for the final chapter of the day - a 'City Connections' event bringing our 40 students into a networking opportunity with 40 of our alumni. The other host (who in truth really did more than me since he provided the premises and the food and drink in the prestigious office of one of the big four accountancy firms) was an alumnus: a graduate in Control Engineering. The students were all from the Faculty of Social Sciences. One vital initial lesson was how many alumni had moved away from their disciplinary origins into significant city jobs - I think there were alumni there from all faculties except Medicine, Dentistry and Health.
In my welcome speech I talked about the transformative power of education - that had enabled our alumni to succeed in their careers, and that our students were now experiencing. I drew attention to my own background as the first in my extended family to go to university - an experience that was clearly shared not just by the students present but also by many of the alumni.
But the most moving thing of the evening was to listen in on the conversations between our alumni and the students - the former keen to provide useful advice to those starting out on careers, the latter motivated to derive every bit of wisdom and experience from the opportunity. There was a real buzz in the air, and I am sure that everyone involved has set off for home with a feeling that something special had been organised this evening to bring key elements of the University of Sheffield 'family' more closely together.
I said this was a 'new' event. It was jointly organised by our alumni team, who provided the contacts for the visits during the day and the attendees for the evening event, and our Faculty of Social Sciences who saw the opportunity for some of their widening participation students to have what I'm sure they will look back on as an important day in their lives. I hope other faculties will now follow the model we have established today.
The only drawback to the day? East Midlands Trains failed to operate the seat reservations for a carriage-ful of students on a very crowded train on the way back home at the end of what had been a long day for them.
No comments:
Post a Comment