I am still a long way off introducing myself around the
whole office but I made a little more progress this week including visits to
the Walsall and Telford campuses. No doubt you will have noticed already
that my strategy is not to lurk at people’s desks but to accept invites to
existing meetings and to take occasional time out in the team room!
Please do not hesitate to come and grab me for a chat or to say hello.
Now I am up and running with Outlook the calendar is up to date if you just
want to send me an invite.
I am very grateful to Tahu for the guided tour at
Walsall - and to Basil for holding the fort. The campus was larger than I
had expected and about the same size of one half of the City Campus.
Given the number of facilities supported across that Estate including (among
other things) desktop, AV and network it is not surprising that the team has
concerns about maintaining responsive levels of service across the extended day
with a limited physical presence. The other key takeaways were the need
for sustainable investment in technology to support high quality learning spaces,
and the completion of the PC upgrade program including thin client facilities
in the Learning Centre. Tahu introduced me to a number of people
including the campus operations manager who explained the challenges of
managing an evolving physical estate in a relatively suburban environment
especially when spaces are refurbished, replaced or enhanced. Car parking
was high on his list and as I parked about half a mile away I can see why that
is important to students and local residents alike.
I am also very grateful to Andy for the guided tour at
Telford. There are major multi-million pound developments to the
Engineering facilities which are coming on stream and it was good to meet Prof.
Mark Stanford on our travels who explained how much of the investment was also
going into laboratory upgrades and new learning facilities. We also
visited the diverse range of other programs on the campus including the
international academy, centre for international development and the
e-innovation centre. Of course, we also visited the Learning Centre and
the new Engineering workstation laboratories launched successfully this Summer.
We also support the wired and wireless networks throughout campus including the
Halls of Residence and the extensive conferencing facilities. I learned that
DAS also supports learning facilities at the University Centre in Southwater
One. Once again, the key takeaways were the need for sustainable
investment in learning spaces, and maintaining responsive levels of services
for an expanding campus.
During last week there were several meetings with the
Faculty of Science and Engineering. The Dean, Nazira, emphasised major
investment plans across a large Faculty including Springfield redevelopment,
relationships with University Technology Colleges and the significant overseas
programs including Hong Kong, Saudi Arabia and Oman. Nazira is also
seeking further investment to grow biosciences, and also emphasised new
appointments to lead the Schools which are in progress. The many
positives for DAS included advances in digital lecture capture, ability to
broadcast lectures internationally such as Sri Lanka, and the amazing upgrades
to IT and learning facilities in the Alan Turing building. We also have
some work to do on what I call hygiene factors (doing the day-to-day business
effectively) and we have a few long-running snags which I will be following up
in the spirit of continual improvement. I had a very useful meeting with
the Faculty IT team and we have agreed to review communications channels
resulting from my new role, and how we can feed student and customer
requirements at Faculty and School into the Digital Strategy.
One of the very useful pieces of feedback from the first
newsletter was feedback from James Keatley on communications initiatives.
James also provided a copy of the extensive piece of work undertaken into DAS
Communications led by Matthew Green and Joss Granger. I will be reading
up on existing work and looking again with Fiona and James Anthony-Edwards to
review those recommendations with the team who participated in this
comprehensive review.
Finally, in my first catch up meeting with James and
Fiona since arriving I mentioned the three things that have already emerged as
potential priorities:
(1) Communications
about changes – ensuring that we continue to have a joined up approach across
DAS going forward, but also considering external communications beyond the
Directorate itself and also out into the City, Region and Key Partnerships.
(2) Fixing
some hygiene factors that are emerging and also working this through as a
continual improvement process – not just a quick fix approach
(3) Ongoing
induction so that I can better understand the student and organisation key
priorities – with a particular focus of course on the process regarding
development of the Digital Strategy and roadmap.
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