Dr Rebecca Khanna, Assistant Dean, Academic Development

We have begun a fresh academic year and accompanying that new-ness there is the opportunity to reflect and consider new-year-type resolutions. In my role as Assistant Dean, Academic Development, and now as the local Chair of HWB Shaping Futures Board, I recommend that there could not be a better time to reconsider our purpose, value our achievements and rekindle aspirations. In particular, to consider the ways we are shaping futures of, and with our students, but also ourselves as professionals, as members of teams and citizens working within a large University.

We are about to set off on a significant programme of work connected with a wide range of initiatives to support an excellent learning partnership between students and staff. Much of this work across education and research is centred on the agendas of the University’s Strategic Pillar Boards. Locally HWB Boards are also starting up this semester. There is much to do. In these circumstances, for efficiency it can sometimes seem easier ‘to pull up the drawbridge’ and organise ourselves within familiar teams. Whilst that action might be expedient, we run the risk of being blind creatures of habit, siloed, missing opportunities to give ourselves credit, in the end stuck with familiar challenges.

In other words, we can either allow our futures to be constrained by immediate circumstances or instead we can choose to think and act differently about them. It’s work in progress – that’s my resolve this year. What’s yours?