Extracts from a speech by Dr Philip Harvey,
Registrar and Secretary
Valuing the talent of our professional staff
What do we see and what do we feel when we watch a superb performance of
Shakespeare by the actor Jude Law, like the one we have just watched on screen?
The mystical beauty of Shakespeare’s words? The stunning ability of an outstanding
actor to bring those words to life 400 years or more after they were written? The
powerful emotions that catch in our throats? The thought that someone else is
telling our own story in ways which we could only dream to achieve?
We may feel all those things. But after a while perhaps we also realize that someone
or in fact many people have thought precisely about how best to generate those
responses in us. What we see and feel is directed, it is by design, it has been thought
about.
WHAT DON’T YOU SEE?
How many of you, like me, watched the opening ceremony of the Olympics this
summer, and were carried along by Danny Boyle’s narrative, the drama of our story
of being Great Britain, the pride in knowing he was talking about this city’s history in
forging steel that went to all four corners of the world?
That performance was a reminder that in difficult and uncertain times we can
surprise, deliver something that shimmers with brilliance and we can far exceed
people’s expectations of us.
Yet behind the star athletes like Jess Ennis and Mo Farah were the people who
conceived, created and delivered the greatest show on earth – from Seb Coe who
used to train on local Sheffield roads with his Dad right through to the Games
Makers, the 80,000 volunteers who were chosen to be there, for their enthusiasm,
team focus and can-do attitude.
INSPIRE A GENERATION
And make no mistake, we here in the University of Sheffield are conceiving, creating
and delivering right now for triumphs to match those of this summer.
This week Jess Ennis, as the patron of our Elite Sport Scholars programme, handed a
scholarship to our next rising star in the world of athletics – Jasmin Sawyers, a first
year law student who we hope will be going for gold in Rio in the long jump. A
scholarship that signals our university’s support for helping someone achieve the
very best in sport while they study for their career.
But of course, our business is not just to find and support individual brilliance in
people like Jess or Jasmin. Here in this University some of the best minds in the
world are working on things far more complicated than the mind boggling logistics of
putting on an Olympic Games – problems that our social scientists call ‘wicked
problems’ – problems that have so many interdependencies that they are immensely
difficult or impossible to solve because of incomplete, contradictory, and changing
requirements that are often difficult to recognize.
I get a thrill every day from the media feed, seeing how the world is reporting the
work we do, our research and related activity that is tackling some of the ‘wickedproblems’ that make up today’s global challenges for life on earth in the twenty first
century. I share with many of you a deep-seated pride in knowing I work for the
same place as does, for example, Dr Marcello Rivolta whose stem-cell research has
given so many hope that we might be closer to a cure for deafness.
I also know the talent which supports that work. Behind the scenes are professional
staff in the Department of Biomedical Science and Research and Innovation Services.
And the fact that this work was profiled on the BBC ten o’clock news and spread
across the world by the support given by the Media Team, including Press Officer
Paul Mannion.
I also take huge pride in knowing that we are providing space for a worldwide
academic community to come together in the form of the new Sheffield Political
Economy Research Institute to devise alternatives for a world economy and models
of global governance that we will need if we are to address the challenges of feeding
a world of £10BN people.
Activities like SPERI do not run themselves. Professor Tony Payne relies heavily upon
SPERI’s administrator Sarah Boswell. Her work is shown on its website and social
media feed, and in the launch event with Ed Milliband which packed out the
Ocatagon. Sarah also had superb support from our professional Events Organiser
Polly Wilson.
And I am immensely proud when I think about the achievements of the AMRC, which
in 10 years has grown from a bold collaborative idea to a global success which has
received both a Queen’s Anniversary Prize for Higher Education and the accolade of
being a Boeing Supplier of the Year. As well as transforming the face of UK
manufacturing and University collaboration with industry, the AMRC is creating up to
450 apprenticeships. It recently received a grant from Regional Growth Fund of over
£37 million.
This major investment support a major 5 year programme of supplier development
and manufacturing R&D in the civil nuclear industry and more widely, and will create
value in the UK that would otherwise migrate overseas and to sustain UK
employment for at least 20 years.
This work is supported by a team of Professional staff based down at the AMRC led
by Christine Ridgway, and supported at the University by Business Manager Sue
Grocutt. Colleagues in Finance and HR, PR, EFM and now Student Services are
engaging in new ways with this exciting venture to provide high quality support to
assist AMRC in ways which recognize the commercial and fast paced environment in
which they operate.
There are many other examples of professional collaboration which spring to mind.
This summer we held our first ever Festival of the Mind. We thought big and planned
to be original and it worked. We thought we might attract 4,000 visitors – in fact
15,000 came to over 70 events.
Many of you here worked with Professor Vanessa Toulmin who has the motto ‘build
it and they will come’. You helped put up a tent in the city centre, and the people
certainly came – the Festival received national and international attention and drew
new audiences to the originality of our work.
VALUING THE TALENTS OF PROFESSIONAL STAFF
I have picked out just a few examples, but each of you is here today for a reason.
You have the potential to make a real difference to our University.
I hope you will take this opportunity to think about how you can develop your
professional career, how you can make a difference as an individual and with others
and how you can help the University to be the best at what it does.
I draw this confidence in part from my own experience as a member of four
universities ’ Professional Staff.
My first ten years at The University of Warwick taught me many things. I was
appointed by a man who remains an international figure in his field. He was a clever,
shrewd and immensely energetic and inspirational leader; passionate about his
University, uncanny in getting the big picture right and encyclopaedic about the
details. He was ‘driven’ to the point where we should have wired him into the
national grid, and at times, frankly, very demanding. But we would have done
anything for him.
Mike Shattock taught me that if you believe in your message enough, tell enough
people, are quick enough to react and mobilise, you can succeed, often in ways that
surpass expectation. You have to deliver - walking as well as talking is important.
But perception and reputation are built a lot around powerful messages, people
sharing experiences and telling and re-telling the story. What is ours? What is the
story about Sheffield University that you tell?
Something else that working at Warwick taught me, was that getting the message
right and ‘out there’ meant that people wanted to come and see what we did, so
many in fact that we had to set up an office to handle the visitors, do the tours,
choose the people to tell the story, much as Keith Ridgway is having to do now out at
the AMRC. Is that happening to us? Do you have a stream of people from around
the world getting in touch to find out what you do?
I know that the answer for many of you is 'yes' - HR recently organised three days for
a visiting delegation from Ottawa in Canada who came to the UK solely to see the
work being done on the Sheffield Leader programme. But is our binding narrative
the same, is it consistent, can we all tell the Sheffield story if asked to?
THE TRANSFORMING POWER OF EDUCATION
The most humbling experience I had of this kind was teaching a summer school for
two consecutive years in Ethiopia. The British Council approached Warwick because
the Ethiopian Ministry of Education wanted their university staff to be more
entrepreneurial. I was volunteered to go. Working in a city where vultures circle
overhead of downtown, where staff have travelled on foot and by public transport
for three days to attend your classes, where the resources available to their
institutions are impossibly small is an experience that I know some of you share with
me and it's one we shall never forget.
The desire to learn, to educate, to share knowledge and ideas is so powerful that
university colleagues can instantly recognise the discourse, the challenges and
engage with the solutions - what we do, what our business is about, has a universal
appeal that transcends context and borders, makes collaboration possible, and
builds friendships that last lifetimes.
And now, twenty years on, here in Sheffield I am part of the phenomenal team of
both staff and students who make up a community with an audacious vision of
blending world-class research with an enthusiasm to get involved and apply our
knowledge.
UNDERSTANDING THE VALUES OF THE SHEFFIELD PROFESSIONAL
So what does the Sheffield Professional mean to me?
It means:
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people who are committed to the idea of our University
a place where we think our work matters
a space where we can relish that we discover, innovate and develop new
technology - if we don't, who will?
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that we welcome competition and we know what the competition looks like
a place where we are tolerant of opposing views
that we like to offer opportunity to anyone who can benefit including those
less fortunate than ourselves
that we are determined and resolute... 'gritty' in our ambition
that we are committed to action not business as usual
And it is not only my ideas which matter. What the Sheffield Professional means will
be personified by each of you in your own work and desire to be the best you can be.
As the Vice-Chancellor says, you need to shape the University we are.
Success has many faces. It is a mosaic made up of many talents. The important
challenge is to see that you are part of that.
I am sure you are aware of some of the challenges ahead. And there will be obstacles
and opportunities over the next few years which we can’t begin to imagine. Think
what the last decade has made possible in terms of technology. How our world has
changed, and our economy. Think about Government’s changes to Higher
Education in the last two years – how many of these could we have predicted?
But although the context in which we are working is changing almost every day, and
the challenges of responding swiftly and successfully are immense, the desire to
learn has not changed. Talented people are still determined to achieve and to
improve the world and to do so by experiencing Higher Education.
For all these reasons, I am proud to lead and to encourage the development of the
Professional Staff in Sheffield. We work in the best business in the world and I have
confidence that, for The University of Sheffield, the best is yet to come.