The Building a Great University update from the October 2017 Leadership Bulletin
Building a Great University – Richard Calvert
The Building a Great University agenda has some big programmes of work at its heart – the new Professional Service Operating Model, the Estates Masterplan, the new IT roadmap and so on. I particularly hope you’ll have seen the recent communications on the PSOM; we’ll be coming back to you in the next couple of weeks with details of the next phase of work, which was endorsed by BaGU at its last meeting. But as Christina says in her introduction, successful delivery of the new University strategy isn’t just about these big initiatives. It’s also about all the hard work and commitment which goes into delivering the services which underpin so much else of what we do. In the case of BaGU, this applies to lots of our core service areas, and I wanted to say a bit more about some of those which have been particularly busy over recent weeks.
The confirmation and clearing process, as I said in my blog in late August, was a fantastic example of Hallam coming together to deliver a great outcome for the University, but also of course to give a really positive impression of Hallam to all the prospective students who were ringing, emailing and visiting us during that period. And then it was also really good to have my first experience of enrolment a few weeks ago. As with the clearing process, a huge amount of work goes on behind the scenes, right across the University, to make sure we’re as well prepared as possible. Staff in Registry Services obviously have a critical role to play, but as with the clearing process we rely on volunteers from elsewhere, as well as all the teams in facilities, DTS, faculty staff and many others to make sure it runs smoothly. As a reminder of the scale, almost 26,000 students had enrolled for the 2017/18 session by the end of enrolment week; and as anyone who was involved will have seen, things not only went very smoothly – with very few queues – but there was also a real buzz about the place which sets the tone for the new academic year.
As we move through the Autumn, key things to look out for include not only the PSOM Phase 2 work, but also the launch of the Hallam Deal, the emerging estates masterplan, further evolution of the IT roadmap, as well as a more strategic approach to our commercial work. There’s a lot there, and we will be busy – but this is about getting the foundations right for the next 5-10 years, so please do stay in touch with all this work. Successful delivery will depend very much on our collective leadership of this pillar’s work programme.
