Pastures new

A short blogging drought while I removed myself from Bath to Newcastle to take up a new role as Head of Quality in Learning and Teaching.

It’s strange being a new girl again – recognising the big picture ’stuff’ like political debates on quality management, discussions of the balance between research and teaching or the relationship between academic and administrative roles, but being slower than a really slow thing when it comes to everyday things, like knowing which route to take across campus or finding an envelope.

As well as getting to grips with a new environment, I’m trying to understand a manage a new team, budget, structures and communication; identify the ‘academic grain’ of a new institution; grapple with the deliveryof existing projects, and develop a sense of where the emerging priorities lie.

I’m also looking back – trying to pull together my thoughts on what I have learned professionally from my time at Bath. I find I keep slipping into lists of things done or knowledge acquired- completed PhD, became an audit secretary, survived an institutional audit etc. This may need to be the start of an ongoing list, but at least it’s a start. I have -

• developed my own sense of professional identity. I emerged from Warwick thinking that was how academic administration was done, and I still remain committed to many of the elements of the ‘Warwick way’. During my time at Bath, I had the chance to consider and defend certain values, acquire new role models and observe different approaches in action – I identify myself as a generalist by intellectual as well as professional inclination, seeing the strength in understanding how parts of an organisation/service fit together as a broader whole, and I am strongly committed to a robust professional partnership with academic colleagues and student representatives (The professional administrator as Ginger Rogers? Able to do everything Fred Astaire did but in reverse and in high heels? There is of course the thorny issue of who should lead….). I aspire to but don’t always achieve the intellectual strength that comes from a combination of grasp of detail and bigger picture, and the grace that characterises some of the administrators I most admire;
• thought more coherently about the type of higher education to which I am committed and best suited. Not all of it is fashionable – a hint of John Henry Newman, anyone? – but it’s what I think of as home;
• realised that a little clarity of expression and structure, whether in policy or personnel management, can go an awfully long way;
• sought to understand the intersecting layers of academic culture (back to working with the academic grain again!) - looking at the prerequisites of achieving cultural as well as structural change , as well as how momentum can be built through activity on a number of levels.