The 1970s were the apogee decade for Christmas hits: by turns cheesy, embarrassing and, very occasionally, memorable. They still get piped endlessly in shops each year. John Lennon and Yoko Ono’s was from 1971. The lyrics are far from Lennon’s best, but the song essentially begins with “So this is Christmas/And what have you done/Another…
Universities are complex organisations. Sheffield Hallam – 4500 staff and 32000 students – is the size of a small town. That remains true even if, over the past few months, the town has become a series of connected hamlets as we have all become used to working in radically different ways. Our core purposes may…
In November 2016, following the unexpected victory of Donald Trump in the American presidential election, I wrote a blog on election outcomes and the values of the university. Now that the Trump era has been brought to a close by the 2020 election, it seems right to come back to American politics and what they…
Jacob Billington graduated in Geography from Sheffield Hallam in 2019. He was overjoyed to have been successful in his application for a year-long graduate internship working with the Library team. Over the summer of 2020, he worked on developing the University’s welcome communications for new students, welcoming them to our socially distanced provision. At the…
I stopped counting some time ago: the number of days and weeks since we were required to transition the university into remote operation – so it is salutary to be reminded that we are now entering the seventh month of what is, in effect, an extended incident response. There are competing pressures every day, with…
This is an extremely challenging week. The news has been dominated by rising Covid infections rates and speculation about tightening local and national restrictions. For universities, increased numbers of reported positive cases have prompted decisions to increase the proportion of online teaching. At Sheffield Hallam, we have taken the decision to adjust the balance between…
This week, our main undergraduate cohorts arrive for what will, inevitably, be a rather different week of academic and institutional welcome activities. Sheffield Hallam is one of the UK’s largest universities, so the numbers are considerable. We will welcome nearly 7000 new UK undergraduate students, together with post-graduate and international students for their first term…
There’s the beginning of an Autumn chill in the morning air. The August bank holiday is behind us, and with it the summer. It is the beginning of a new academic year. In quite unusual circumstances, pupils are already returning to school after their unexpectedly long, unprecedented break. I’ll come back to pupils returning to…
In this unprecedented year, it is quite difficult to find the right adjective for the events of the last week. The online thesaurus isn’t much help. In previous years, the bulk of the annual admissions, confirmation and clearing activity would be behind us by now: instead, we are essentially re-running elements of the process, and…
Everything is different this year. The concept of examination results without examinations sound like one of those maddening logic puzzles or a difficult philosophical conundrum. Of course, it is neither: later this week, tens of thousands of A-level students will be getting examination results for examinations they did not sit. Instead, Ofqual, the examination regulator,…