It wasn’t – but one of my New Year resolutions should have been to write more frequent and shorter blog entries. However, as it wasn’t a NY resolution, maybe there’s some chance I’ll keep to it, lol.
Anyway, some work highlights from this new year so far include the following… After the writing of a student criminal convictions (self declaration + CRB) policy, I attended my first panel meeting with a student who had been involved in a very difficult life tragedy resulting in a custodial sentence that will never be regarded as spent for the career the person wanted to pursue. This however does not preclude enrolment on a course – but the outlook for professional progression was bleak. Very difficult and emotionally fraught case but the Dean who I was with on the Panel is just such a sound and experienced chap!
The routine round of committee meetings (including Management Board) have been busy but perhaps not as much as usual, largely due to the Christmas period – though Academic Board was riveting for wider environmental issues and a couple of interesting facts I had not realised about our School Quality Assurance and Enhancement Committees (not least of which is that I am a member!) …
An interesting meeting about various issues surrounding Distance Learning within the University raised more questions for me than it answered – but it is the beginning of a process; and a similar meeting with RISE colleagues placed within IT working on pan-Wales learning environments was similar in its outcomes – though I have some ideas on linking this work with the recommendations of the recent Webb review of FE in Wales…
As part of the ongoing City Centre Campus work (please don’t think that because I don’t mention it that it isn’t still taking up a lot of time!), I Chaired a meeting of the Learning Environment Group to look at minimum specifications of teaching rooms to feed into Learning and Teaching Committee.
One more draft of the Under 18s / vulnerable adults paper and its now ready for submission to the next Management Board – thanks Lawrence.
Administrative meetings including a session with the external consultant who is leading us through the KPI (key performance indicators) case study method – we’re one of the six institutions in the UK who are developing Governor centred KPIs as part of a national initiative … more to follow (wow, I finally find a benefit from reading all those Kaplan books, lol).
Then, a meeting with our simply excellent Director of Quality Assurance and Enhancement (Brent Stephens) to look at how we can improve processes to streamline/avoid so many curriculum changes coming through the system late in the year – very worthwhile.
Finance, Deans Forum and and trying to tackle Wide format printing (I get all the fun!) completes the list of Admin related meetings.
Finally, we had a day last Friday with senior managers and the Leadership Foundation looking at the future – this was so much more positive (in terms of the people mix) than it would have been even a year ago. We have some great people here – and the more their sails become set towards the same wind, the faster and further we will go!
Its a great time to be working here.
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