A couple of summaries of sessions at this year’s Conference have been posted below by those from our Branch who attended them. You can browse presentations from most sessions at http://www.aua.ac.uk/event_pages-25-Conference-presentations.html
Enjoy!
AUA Conference 2012
Working Session: Excellence in professional services: can students recognise it?
On the face of it this was a ‘graveyard’ session as it was after lunch, on the last day and perhaps the people there were made up largely of those whose trains home weren’t running until the late afternoon so they may as well fill the time with something!
For me it turned out to be one of the best ‘breakout’ sessions. Run by the NUS, it proposed that students could be engaged as partners in professional services development. It challenged the attendees to define what entails a ‘magic moment’ for a student’s experience of professional service and concluded that most often excellence is when we are not seen – a bit like a good football referee. Therefore a partnership approach where students’ awareness of the unseen services is raised and through that awareness can offer insight into professional development.
Students and administrators engaging? Whatever next?
Mark Glaister, OU Library
Working session 2: Challenging communities and challenging identities: the impact of the commercial spinout project on university staff
Dr Rachel Birds, Head of Biotechnical Services, University of Sheffield
Presentation: http://www.slideshare.net/The_AUA/202-changing-communities-and-challenging-identities
The session was based on the outcomes of Dr Birds’ ethnographic study, conducted as part of her EdD programme, and in particular on the following questions:
The emphasis of Dr Birds’ study was the impact of commercialisation on professional staff in Higher Education, as opposed to academic staff, although there are many areas of commonality.
The experience itself was examined at three levels:
building into a “web of experience” in which the meso level came through particularly strongly – ie the University had a disproportionate impact on messages coming through from the external environment.
Salient points emerging from the study were:
Reflection
I chose this session as I was particularly interested in the aspect of the challenge to personal identities which significant change seems to be presenting, to academic staff in particular, in my own experience. I also had an interest in the scenario as we have wonderd from time to time about the potential for similar spin-off activity in our own context. In the event there was much food for thought on the first area of interest, the discussions and background information to the session encouraged me to pass the speaker’s contact details (with her permission) to our Faculty Business Development Manager. Viva networking!
Helen Philip
Environment, Earth & Ecosystems, Faculty of Science
Full details and booking form can be found at http://www.aua.ac.uk/event-49-East-Midlands-Conference.html
Nominations for the post of Branch Co-ordinator, as announced in our e-mail of 7 March 2012, have now closed. Just one nomination was received (from three proposer/seconders) – Dawn Turpin. Dawn is therefore declared elected unopposed for three years commencing 1 September 2012.
Dawn is currently a Senior Manager in the University Secretary’s Office, managing strategic initiatives and providing support to key responsibilities within the university secretary’s portfolio. Currently these are
Although Dawn’s term of office commences this autumn, she will be working with Helen Cooke on planning the programme for the 2012/13 academic year ahead of the official start. If you have any ideas for the programme please contact Helen (h.j.cooke) or Dawn (d.m.turpin), or send them to the AUA@open.ac.uk mailbox as usual.
One of the actions from our East Midlands Branch Coordinator meeting a couple of weeks ago was for each branch to collate a few case studies of AUA members that have benefitted from membership – this could be regarding career progression as a result of membership in general or specific activities, eg. PGCert involvement (as a candidate or mentor), conference attendance/presentation or international travel opportunities via the AUA. The idea is for these case studies to be gathered for the East Midlands regional conference to be held in Derby in June, but also as a resource for us here at the OU to encourage new members. We hope to include these on our branch blog.
As a current member – and given your involvement with the AUA – I wondered if you might be willing to contribute a short case study for this purpose? If so, I have provided some questions below to try and steer you in the right direction but please feel free to improvise!
We’re keen to try and collate these by the middle of March so would be grateful if you could get something back to me by Friday 30th March. And ideally we’d like to include a photo if you would be willing to include one.
I understand everyone is very busy but if you could let me know if you’d be willing to help or not I’d be very grateful.
Helen P’s 3 year term of office as Branch Co-ordinator comes to an end at the end of this academic year, and we will shortly be calling for nominations for a new BC to work alongside Helen Cooke, planning and organising Branch activities and communications, representing us on the Regional Network Co-ordinator team and at occasional National events for Network Co-ordinators. It’s voluntary, but a really good networking and development experience in its own right (looks good on the CV too!), and an opportunity to influence the future development of the Branch. BCs are elected by the Branch to serve for three years (Helen C’s term of office runs until autumn 2013). Please contact either of the Helens if you’d like further information.
Our next meeting will be on Tuesday 6th March 2012 in the Learning & Development Centre, Wilson Building, Walton Hall. Steve Clayton will be sharing his reflections on “How to avoid becoming a cooked frog. Responding to change: providing leadership & directing re-sources in leaner times “. This session, based on Steve’s previous presentations at both National and Regional Conference, focuses on senior level administration and leadership and provides an insight into this process using real examples, anecdotes and ideas on how to lead and communicate change against a backdrop of significant resource reduction. It will help professional staff at all levels answer the common question of how business and operations are to be managed with less resource and how collaborative approaches can help in a competitive environment.
This year’s AUA National Conference is being held in Manchester 2-4 April 2012. “Early bird” booking rates are available up to 31 January, so if you’re intending to come and haven’t yet booked, please do so asap. Just a quick reminder that you need to have to hand either a PO number or your credit card (if you’re self-funding or have agreed with your unit that you can pay and claim back) when you make your booking and you do need to do it yourself as you have to be logged in to the members area and input your workshop choices as part of the booking process. Please let us know at AUA@open.ac.uk when you’ve booked so we can arrange to put you in touch with others who are attending.
