Engineering
This is an individual response
Overview
I am very supportive of the project
principles and fully agree with the direction
of travel. This view is informed by
experience of the successful support
structure within Engineering. Aspects of
this structure which are echoed in the
proposal include faculty-level student
support management, faculty-level
graduate student support, and the 'matrix'
management structure with both academic
director and admin manager roles.
Concerns are set out below.
Thank you.
Professional Concerns
The following risks may be identified in the
proposals:
•
The separate reporting line for
Graduate Schools leads to PGR
administration being treated as a
separate function, insulated from the
project principles and new ways of
working that these imply.
•
Administrative decisions for PGR
support are made by central offices,
working to the Graduate Board and its
sub-committee structure.
Graduate Schools need to be an
integral part of the new model.
We need to ensure that PGR
administration is integrated
wherever appropriate and this will
be addressed by a new PGR
Group being established to
ensure consistency with the
review.
Greater alignment between taught
and research policy is required
where practical.
• Graduate school offices are excluded
from meaningful involvement in process
design and management decisions.
Agreed.
• The matrix structure of Admissions and
Graduate Support leads to a confusion
or conflict of responsibilities, which in
turn obstructs change and development
in the management of research student
admissions.
Staff from the faculties should be
equal partners with staff from the
central services in considering
processes and supporting
systems.
• Central offices manage local delivery
without an understanding of the local
functions.
• The University continues to structure its
information systems services and
manage its IT development projects in
such a way that they continue to fail to
deliver appropriate IT solutions.
These risks may be reduced if:
• Project principles are rigorously
promoted and major efforts made to
ensure central and local office buy-in in
as positive a way as possible.
• Administrative management decisions
are removed from the academic
committee structure.
To be considered further.
• Local administrative staff (eg graduate
school offices) are equal partners in
discussions of structure.
In consultation with PGR Group.
• Clarity is brought to bear on the
Admissions/ Graduate Support crossover with the imperative to provide
streamlined and high-quality
procedures.
This is a fundamental objective of
the Student Processes Project
and the cross-institutional teamworking approach of the Process
Analysis Teams has been one of
the most successful outcomes of
the project and has confirmed the
importance of shared,
standardised practices.
• Shared working practices and culture
become an imperative in the
prioritisation of work in central and local
offices, with mutual exchanges of
meaningful duration, shared electronic
files, shared objectives and
responsibilities, etc.
Engineering
School 1
Agreed - we aim to achieve this
through effective consultation.
• The University makes significant
changes to how it specifies, delivers,
and supports information systems and
invests in increasing the IT literacy of
administrative staff.
Agreed
It was mentioned that the student services
review team were wanting to stop
duplication of work being done at
Faculty/School and TSA level. This is a
good idea. Just an example of this, at the
moment the School’s process change of
module forms on banner but we still have to
send the forms to TSA where they then
check what we have inputted. I think giving
staff in faculties/school’s the responsibility
to do things like this without making more
work by sending things to TSA etc and
would make things run smoother. At the
moment it seems to me that TSA do a lot of
things that make our life more difficult.
Either TSA process the change of module
Agreed we need to avoid this sort
of duplication which is currently
only too evident in many areas.
The UPMC project is looking to
address these types of issues.
forms when the school has signed them off
entirely, or the School does the whole
process. There are other things to do with
examination procedures where work done
at Faculty/School and TSA level seems to
be duplicated too. I think this needs
looking at in greater detail.
Engineering
School 2
I am involved with student support in the
Faculty of Engineering (Doctoral Training
Centre PhD students studying the
Integrated PhD with MSc programme in
Low Carbon Technologies). I’ve been
participating in the consultation process for
the Student Services review and wanted to
voice my concerns about the review.
I can appreciate that the University wants to
ensure that NSS scores improve, and that
all students get a comparable deal, but I
have some concerns about the process of
review as I’ve experienced it:
1. PAT teams seem to have spent an
extraordinary amount of time and effort
working on the tiniest details of
incredibly complex flow charts, a
process that apparently won’t be
completed for months, if at all. By the
time any PAT signs off, their work will
probably be out of date. This seems to
be an unnecessary use of valuable
resources (i.e. experienced, key staff
members’ workload) at a critical time.
The Process Analysis Teams
have spent a lot of time,
identifying ways in which the
processes can be streamlined
and standardised. As these
changes are implemented, work
on which has now started, the
value for students and staff will
become clearer. The key thing
which has been proved by the
PAT’s is how effective cross
institutional team work can be,
which is a credit to those
involved.
2. Even if the all the work by the PAT
teams is directly implemented, as now
seems unlikely, I think it would be very
difficult to communicate it effectively to
the members of staff who routinely work
in these areas, let alone to new staff
unfamiliar with the way the University
works. Looking around the meetings
I’ve attended, and watching people
glaze over as we descend into the
depths of sub-Levels of flow charts, I
find it hard to believe that the product of
these sessions will be comprehensible
or accessible except to an expert.
The work of the PATs is already
being taken forward. It is
recognised that it will be important
to communicate with staff and to
provide appropriate training for
staff but it is not intended that all
staff understand all processes but
those with which they work and
those which relate to them.
3. I’m skeptical of changes which aim to
standardize procedures over diverse
It is not intended that staff will
only work in one area but will still
areas, and remove staff from
‘generalist’ roles (this is my impression
of the Student Services Review overall).
I’ve enjoyed the support roles I’ve been
in, and therefore been motivated to
provide a better service, precisely
because they’ve been varied, with
crossover into a lot of different
disciplines, and contact with different
teams and individuals. I’ve also been
lucky enough to have roles that ensure I
have regular in-depth contact with
students.
4. I believe that the more support staff are
removed from contact with students and
shut in offices where they work on a
‘production line’ process, the worse the
experience of both students and staff
will be. NSS scores will go down as
students feel they have no meaningful
staff contact except with a busy lecturer,
and support staff will be demoralized by
the lack of variety and interest (and
development) in their roles.
have opportunities for variety
within student education services.
Providing students with consistent
front line contact is integral to the
proposals.
There is no intention to remove
the front line service for students.
Some staff will want to specialise
in certain areas of work whilst
others will want to work across
both front and back office areas.
These are my personal views only,
although I think they chime with the general
feeling of staff in discussions I’ve
participated in. I feel strongly that point 3
especially should be borne in mind by the
team driving the review process.
Engineering –
Faculty
A meeting of Engineering student services
staff was convened last week to discuss the
proposed structures presented by Professor
Jones at the recent consultation sessions.
Although not everyone was able to be
present all the teams within Engineering
Student Services were represented.
There were positive comments about the
one university approach but concern that
the central structures were still missing from
these proposals.
Some changes to central
structures have already taken
place, but work is ongoing on this
and will be shared in the near
future.
Questions were raised about how the
proposed structures would exactly impact
on Engineering as it was felt that
Engineering already matched one of the
possible structures. It was felt that any
further changes to our structures would be
disruptive to the current service and that
there would be no appetite for change
A number of faculties have many
of the features already in place.
unless this was an outcome of the process
work. If changes were being proposed as a
result of the process re-engineering activity
then that would be a different matter but to
change Engineering's structures before the
outcomes of that exercise would be
extremely disruptive and unnecessary.
With regards to the work being undertaken
by the Process Analysis Teams clarification
was needed as to the input the PATs had in
drawing up the proposed structures.
Staff were assuming that the structures
were as a result of the process work. Three
members of the PATs were present and
therefore able to confirm that the structures
were not as a result of the work they had
been involved in and that the PATs had
specifically avoided looking at structures.
It was not intended to imply that
the PATs had been involved in
the structural proposals, a point
made clear previously. What the
work of the PATs has proved is
the value and effectiveness of
cross institutional team work.
Professional development opportunities in
the proposed structures were seen to be
more narrow and there was concern that
the structures really only provided
opportunities for staff on the lower grades.
There was also concern that the structures
would pigeon-hole staff into specific areas
eg admissions. Not only did this concern
staff that their knowledge would be limited
but also workload would be difficult to
manage because of the different workload
peaks. It was felt that having an
understanding of student services in
general and what that service supports as a
whole helped staff provide a better service,
develop their knowledge to enhance the
service they provide, and on the whole
helped motivate staff.
It is not the intention to force staff
to focus on a narrow area. There
will remain opportunities for staff
to work across a number of
student support areas as at
present and therefore be
members of more than one
functional team.
There were questions about whether staff
would be required to apply for their roles as
a result of the restructure. Short term staff
with roles which fall into the SEM post; long
term all student services staff.
This may be the case for some
roles, but has yet to be clarified.
We will be working with each
faculty to consider the impact on
all staff, recognising that faculties
currently have very different
structures in terms of size and
grade spread.
It was acknowledged that there clearly were
specific needs in some faculties to enable
them to provide the kind of service that
Engineering student services currently
provide. It was also acknowledged that
even within Engineering there needed to be
some flexibility with roles to ensure the
That is useful, and details would
be appreciated.
appropriate level of support was provided
for specific programmes, students,
academic community. Examples of how
that currently occurs in Engineering are
available should the SSR require more
information.