What does a Vice-Chancellor do?
I have recently reached my first anniversary as Vice-Chancellor of the University of Nottingham. It has been a stimulating year, and I have learned an enormous amount from colleagues, students and the external stakeholders I have engaged with over the last 12 months.
It is also almost a year since the first colleagues joined my Vice Chancellor’s Mentoring Scheme for staff from groups under-represented in leadership roles in the University. I am pleased to confirm that I will be continuing this programme into 2019 and extending its scope to include staff at Level 6 from all roles. You can find out more about the scheme here and applications for the 2019 scheme can be submitted here until the end of November.
I will also be running more of my Vice-Chancellor Surgery sessions to offer one-to-one conversations with any members of staff at the University. To register for a session, please email BA-VC-Surgery@exmail.nottingham.ac.uk with your preferred date from the list and a brief agenda for the meeting.
As should be the way with mentoring schemes, I have learned as much from my colleagues on the Vice-Chancellor’s Mentoring Scheme as I hope they may have learned from me. One of many astute observations made to me by the participants was that very few people really understand what a Vice-Chancellor does, how we spend our time, how we prioritise, what is important to us.
When I was a junior lecturer, no one bothered much about Vice-Chancellors. They were either invisible or, if they came into your consciousness at all, they were rather lofty figures who seemed to occupy a largely ceremonial role. With the expansion and accompanying politicisation of higher education in recent years, Vice-Chancellors now regularly make the national news and often for negative reasons. If the caricatures are to be believed, Vice-Chancellors are demagogues who spend their time plotting evil deeds against staff and students. It is perhaps no surprise that without more information available, fables like this can gain traction with the media, the public and indeed with our own community. I thought therefore it might be helpful if I gave you my personal perspective on this role one year in.
In general terms, a Vice-Chancellor has four major responsibilities: providing strategic leadership for the University community of staff and students; having accountability to Senate and Council for academic and financial performance as well as compliance with all regulatory bodies; leading and managing the University Executive Board; and being a key point of contact for major stakeholders who will support and impact on our University in a multitude of ways: for example, research funding bodies, donors, alumni, other universities, mission groups, industry partners, policymakers, cultural organisations, local, national or international government officials and suppliers.
That may sound rather dry, but what it adds up to is a constant management of complexity and expectation among individuals and groups who may have entirely different views of what the priorities of the University should be. As I mentioned in my inaugural lecture last year, we have 45,000 students, 9000 staff, 280,000 known alumni and countless partners of all kinds—amounting to the size of a small city. Different individuals, as well as different groups, have diverse demands and needs that are often diametrically opposed. This means that a Vice-Chancellor has to listen to a range of views, examine all the evidence available and exercise judgements on decisions that will please some but will inevitably annoy or offend others. There is also little doubt that however hard we try to get it right, we won't be able to satisfy all those constituencies all the time. I fully accept that being a lightning rod for anxieties and frustrations is an intrinsic part of my role. It is therefore always a pleasure when someone comes to me with a new idea, a solution or a story about something they are proud of. There are plenty of these positives at the University of Nottingham, and it is a welcome counterbalance to some of the more challenging situations that I am called on to resolve.
Every Vice-Chancellor has different motivations and a different leadership style, so it is impossible to generalise about either of these things. My own motivation stems from my strong belief in the transformative value of education and research, and the multiple contributions universities make to society. My ambition is to lead on developments now that will ensure that Nottingham continues to be a strong and successful university long after I am gone. We are living through particularly challenging times, and I am committed to working with our University community to help navigate us through all the unknowns, keeping true to the mission and culture that distinguishes us from our rivals. Given that we are living in such a troubling era for higher education, this requires thinking beyond the moment, being willing to take risks and sometimes to make changes or interventions that will take many years to bear fruit.
I have had a career as an academic and have been through the ordinary vicissitudes of that career, from insecure teaching contracts to the demands of peer review and the plethora of time-consuming administrative roles that characterise academic life. I continue to be research active, albeit in a much reduced way than in the past. With my jobs at the Arts and Humanities Research Council and as Deputy Vice-Chancellor at Sheffield, I have also led and managed professional service teams. I cannot pretend that I understand every problem my colleagues face today, but I feel it is important that the University is led by someone who has experienced many of the same pressures as staff and can empathise with the challenges they face.
I have been asked by my mentees how I cope with the ‘lonely at the top’ syndrome, what impact gender has on my role and how I manage a work/life balance with an unforgiving diary. I have also been asked what surprised me—what I didn’t expect when I took up the role. There are no simple answers to any of these questions. I am fortunate to work in a university with so many talented people who have a zeal for making a difference as well as a strong loyalty to Nottingham. I am lucky in having friends and mentors who have offered me longstanding support and constructive challenge over the years. I am also regularly inspired by the quality and depth of our teaching and research, and the willingness of colleagues to experiment with new ways of doing things.
What makes it all worthwhile are the seeing the many achievements of our students and staff; experiencing the high quality of research, education and student life that characterises all our campuses; the joy of presiding over graduation ceremonies; hearing about the loyalty alumni feel for the University; and learning about the contributions that we make to our local, national and international partners and communities.
I genuinely believe that universities are transformative places and are more important than ever in the divided ‘post-truth’ society we find ourselves in today. Leading our outstanding University and supporting our community of staff and students in this important time is a once in a lifetime privilege.
Professor Shearer West
Vice-Chancellor
31 October 2018