Goodcourse interview - my full notes

So, people will likely have seen that I shared a post from an interview that I did with Kira from the Goodcourse team. The write up was actually only a small part of what we discussed - which itself was only a small part of the notes I’d prepped for the interview. Classically, I ended up talking some much on specific points that we only managed to cover a small number of the questions I was originally told could come up. So, given that this is already written and sat on my google drive (albeit in a fragmented form that needed a bit of copywriting to make it actually readable...) I thought I’d publish it here for anyone who might be interested. As always, would love to hear your thoughts on my thoughts - just drop a comment below.?

So, without further ado…

Intro to your current role & institution

Hi, my name is Andy Winter, I’m Director of Student Support Services at the University of Sheffield. Sheffield is a comprehensive Russell Group university in the UK with a student body of over 30,000 supported by a staffed organisation of around 8,000 people.?

Student Support Services at Sheffield is made up of 7 services:

• Counselling & Mental Health
• Our NHS GP practice
• Disability and Dyslexia Support Service
• Our Student Experience team who cover Welfare & Welfare, Student EDI and Induction, and International Student Support
• The Student Administration Service which looks after the student record and supports things like registration, exams and assessment, progression, complaints, and student discipline
• Our Customer and Digital Experience team who deliver student enquiry management, digital development, and impact and evaluation work
• And Sport Sheffield, which is the University’s Sport and Physical Activity service

So a wide span of activities but all of them focused mainly on student experience and student wellbeing

?

What brought you to student success?

Oh, I always knew growing up in an ex-coal mining town in the North East of England that it was my destiny to be the first in my family to go to University and become a University administrator…

Nah, I think like most people I semi-stumbled into my career. I actually started in Students’ Unions. I first got involved in that because when I started at Uni I noticed that the SU bar didn’t play the music I liked. They said if you want that playing then you’ll have to join the Entertainments committee and become a DJ. So I did. And it spun out from there, getting more involved in stuff like the student newspaper, supporting campaigns (particularly working with the LGBT+ group on campus), joining the SU Council, and then before you know where you are I’ve been elected as a sabbatical officer and I’m supporting students with a campus closure and the transition of students on that site to another University location in a different city.

From there I just kept looking at jobs that resonated with me in terms of the stuff I liked in my previous role. So I went from Education and Welfare Officer at York St John, to running student volunteering at Durham, then onto volunteer development and training at Loughborough, before moving into student activities management at Leeds, then General Management back at York St John, before my final role to date in SUs which was Director of Membership Services at Nottingham. Whilst I was at Nottingham an opportunity came up to apply for a secondment within the University’s Registry department leading some student support functions and because there was a close alignment to the work I was doing in the SU I thought it was worth looking into. I was lucky enough to get that and after 4 and a half years in that role I jumped ship 11 months ago to start here at Sheffield.?

I suppose the through-line in all of that is that I’ve always been interested in how the University experience can transform your life. I regularly would see guys coming into University going “I’m going to be a physicist” and leaving going “I’m going to be a radio journalist” because they had the opportunities that were available within their university. I talk a lot about how the diversity of universities means that it can broaden your mind as to how the world works and send you off in a different direction to the path you may have been on before. It can be as simple as meeting your life partner or that chance to study and spend time in a different country. We have this incredible space where, if they are supported to do so, students can learn way, way more than just the content that is taught on their academic programme. And it excites me to be helping create that space.

?

With recent guests on The Interview, we’ve been discussing the need to foster a sense of inclusion and belonging on campus, particularly post covid. What initiatives have you been working on to this end?

I’m sorry to disappoint people but I don’t think we’re got a silver bullet answer here. We have got a group that includes colleagues from across our SSS teams, our Residence Life team, and our SU looking at what additional initiatives we need to add in to everything that is currently provided. And we’ve got social prescribing via our health service and we’re looking at how we can boost that further to catch those at the most extreme end of this difficulty.?

We’re also looking into what we can do to create more belonging through the academic experience as we know that, for all of the students that will get involved with things like SU clubs and societies, there are a large group of students who will never be interested in those activities and therefore their connection to the institution is solely through their studies.?

I genuinely think though that everyone is still trying to work this stuff out. The silver lining of the pandemic (if there was one) was that it gave us the opportunity to think more about how digital is integrated into our delivery modes and the construction of our courses. But we know that this has created a negative impact in that it has reduced in-person social contact. The challenge now is how we mitigate that without simply thinking we can revert back to what we did before and everything will be hunky dory. We have to remember that student loneliness was a problem in the before times and simply demanding that everyone returns to the classroom full time won’t solve that issue. It would also mean we risk removing all the benefits for inclusion that online learning has provided. Students with disabilities particularly have benefitted from many of the changes we made during the pandemic era so we need to balance those gains in here. I think its going to be interesting to watch how new methods for social interaction which utilise digital, social messaging and collaboration tools to create bonds of connection between students emerge across the sector. And I’m sure there’ll be a load of stuff that we try that fails. But so long as we’ve got that spirit of innovation that’s what’s important right now I think.

?

Student safety is a big concern for many of the student services leaders we speak to. What’s your approach when it comes to making progress on crucial things like reducing incidents of sexual harassment on campus?

Openness. I think you need to have really open and honest conversations about what’s actually going on on campus. That takes bravery because everyone has natural concerns about the potential reputational impacts of showing what level of issue you have on campus. But I think there’s an easy counter to that - show me a University that has low reporting rates and I’ll show you a campus that isn’t necessarily safer, just one that hasn’t created an environment for support and safe disclosure. We know there’s under-reporting and we know that female students particularly are subjected to levels of harassment and abuse that aren’t fully being captured by reporting mechanisms. We need to be honest about that and understand what the barriers to disclosure are.?

From there we need to be really honest about what are inappropriate behaviours and what the attitudes are that perpetuate these within our communities. Universities aren’t islands disconnected from the rest of reality. We have to acknowledge the values and beliefs that students bring with them to their institution - the social groups that they’ve been part of that have allowed inappropriate behaviour to germinate. So some of what we’re doing - through consent sessions and peer campaigning - is about reprogramming where those inappropriate views are held. And that’s tough because you’re not just dealing with university culture, you’re dealing with societal cultures plural.

There is also a part where we need to make it ok for people to acknowledge when they’ve behaved inappropriately in the past and allow them the capacity to change. Not everything that occurs in this space is a violent rape. When you speak with reporting parties there are a large number that don’t want punitive outcomes for the people they are reporting - they just want the perpetrators to know that how they behaved was wrong and to make sure that they learn from that and never subject anyone else to that behaviour.?

That said, in some cases the behaviour is so abhorrent that formal sanctions such as exclusion from University is the only reasonable outcome. I think we need to be more open about what the outcomes from reporting are and I’m inspired by the work that Durham University do here in promoting the cases they’ve taken through disciplinary and what the outcomes were - stripping the personal details so there’s no identifiable data.?

At Sheffield we’re going to be following the lead of those universities that have been more progressive in this space and starting to publish more data so students and staff can have trust in our reporting mechanisms - that when they report something, action will be taken.

All of this said, I do think there’s at times an emphasis placed on universities that isn’t placed as heavily on our other social institutions. We’ve all got a role to play and we’ll definitely play a proactive part in trying to reduce incidents. But it's a bigger puzzle than just higher education. I mean, just look today - we’ve got news of an MP who’s had to resign one of their roles because of sexual harassment. We’ve got another who’s being investigated on suspicion of rape, sexual assault and indecent assault. Has the government suspended those people from their jobs as politicians? No. And yet greater action is expected at universities. But this is not just a swipe at the government - it cuts across all of our social institutions. If we want to have a societal standard for behaviour and consequences of inappropriate behaviour, that standard needs to be applied appropriately in all areas - not just in one - because the signal that sends is more confused, and therefore, less likely to ensure the overall change that we want to see.?

As I say we’ll keep working on it and I know others in Education more widely will keep working on it but I think that unfortunately until we do more to dismantle oppressive patriarchal societal structures and hierarchies, there's always going to be a certain amount of pushing against the tide.

?

Student engagement is another related challenge here we hear a lot from university clients. Where do you currently see students engaging the most, and indeed the least?

I don’t think it's as simple as that because I don’t think students are a homogenous group. There’s so much diversity within the student body that I don’t think you can boil it down to “engagement in small group academic study is greater than engagement in lectures or community volunteering” say. I think you have to understand that the student body is not one community but loads of little overlapping communities and that each community will have different characteristics that affect how they engage and what they engage with.

I do think that universities as a sector haven’t fully grasped that the student body of 30 years ago is not the student body we’ve got now. Whilst I can see signs of change, when you’re working in some universities it can still feel like they are still geared towards the stereotypical “student” audience - a middle class, white kid who went to a private school or a good grammar. Part of that I think is because those students arrive with those advantages and therefore have a better chance of excelling within the environment, so they therefore go on to take up the leadership roles in their Students’ Unions or staff roles within their institutions. That doesn’t mean that people from outside of those backgrounds can’t achieve highly at university. But just because Alan Sugar made it from a market trader to a millionaire doesn’t mean that every market trader will naturally become a millionaire. We notice working class academics more precisely because they are outliers.

You could say that this will change as some of the more diverse students we’ve seen developing through institutions move from the student body into the University workforce and become those sector leaders of tomorrow, but I don’t think leaving it to naturally evolve will be enough. You can see that when you look at the pipelines for black academics. We need to take positive actions to create institutional spaces that are accessible to all.

It’s why things like the Higher Education Secretary’s recent intervention with regard to the Race Equality Charter are so disappointing. It demonstrates a tone deafness to the realities of the university experience for a lot of students and makes it easy for people to say that the government is just interested in defending the rights and privileges of those who already have all of the advantages walking through the door.

?

You’re open about your own experiences with mental health difficulties in your early 20s, why is it so important to open up about this as a leader?

After my breakdown when I went back to work and started talking to people about what had happened to me, I was really struck by how many people said “that happened to me” or “something like that happened to someone I know”.?

I wished that I’d known that as one of the things depression does is that it tells you that how you’re feeling is stupid and that you’re alone in that feeling. And it couldn’t be further from the truth. There’s loads of people who’ve experienced anxiety and depression, and over the past few years there’s been a growing number of people who are comfortable talking about their experiences. I also particularly wanted to show that you can have suffered with this stuff and still succeed and perform highly in a leadership role. So I felt I kind of had a duty to be one of those people.

I suppose I’m trying to humanise something that can at times feel a bit abstract and maybe challenge stereotypes, reduce stigma, all that kind of stuff. I hope my openness will make others feel less alone and less like it's something to hide or be ashamed of.?

I also want to show that it gets better. Yes, I still have low periods and days where I just have to go to bed because I know I’m not going to be able to snap out of it. But I go to bed knowing that tomorrow or the day after will be different, that it is just a moment, and that it's not representative of all of my life and how it will be forever. I’ve been sober now for 7 and a half years. I’ve been off medication for about the same length of time. I completed my last course of counselling about 12 months ago. You know, it is something that you need to keep working on, to keep your mind in check. But I know change is possible, because I’ve done it. And I want others to have that understanding that they can change it too.

?

Previously worked in SUs, how does this inform your current work as a university leader?

I think if you’ve sat on both sides of the fence you get a different perspective on things. The key thing about working in a Students’ Union is how closely you work with students. It might sound bizarre but I’ve seen how easy it is on the University side to become disconnected from day to day student experience so I’m really conscious with my team to be asking continuously how we are working directly with students to inform what we do - not just responding to the outputs from surveys and research.?

You can see how easily well-intended discussion can switch focus from the student to the staff members’ experience of things and how student experience then gets filtered through that lens. I think you also have more of an understanding about how difficult it is to be a student representative and therefore the support and compensation that you need to give to students in those roles to help them express the views of the cohorts that they represent. That’s not to sound condescending - it's more a recognition that it's tough to walk into a room full of older academic and professional services staff members - some of whom may have been in their roles for many years - and tell them that something they are doing isn’t good enough or needs changing.?

It also tends to mean that I can act as a bit of a translator between the two institutions - if people are struggling to understand how to do something inside the other structure or why one side might think a certain way.?

?

Wide range of services under your remit, how do you grapple with all the different parts of student services?

Whilst I’ve got a wide span, I’m lucky in that I work with great people. From my heads of service down through the managers within their teams, I know that we’ve got highly skilled and highly experienced people in place. My job is not to tell them how to do their job - it's to create the environment and the conditions for them to do the best work they can within their roles. That’s about coaching, it's about challenging, it's about highlighting new ideas or best practices inside and outside of HE.?

But it's also about gauging what each person needs at any particular time. At certain times, I need to take a more active, more involved role with the detail of a service or a subject that they are addressing. At other times I can be more distant and allow those staff members space to deliver their work.?

The key is communication. Ensuring that there is a continual dialogue with those leaders, checking in regularly. It’s also about monitoring the service delivery and the stakeholder view of what we’re delivering - stakeholders here being not just our students, but the staff of the University who we work with as well as the staff within the department itself.

?

Lastly, three quick-fire 'advice' questions we ask every interviewee

What's your top tip or most important piece of advice for anyone getting into the industry now?

Try and get as many experiences of different areas as possible. It’s very easy in HE to become highly specialist but that will only get you so far if you’re wanting to climb the leadership ladder. Don’t be afraid to make a sideways move or take on a project or secondment that is less about going up the grade and salary scale and more about broadening your knowledge. That applies to types of institutions as well as roles by the way. I’ve been really lucky that I’ve worked in institutions across mission groups. Working in different contexts with different student bodies means that my thinking isn’t limited to one particular institution's way of doing things. I feel really lucky to have had the opportunities that I’ve had which wouldn’t have come if I’d have only stayed in one place for the whole of my career

Who do you most admire in the HE / EDI space?

So a few people from the EDI space: When I worked at Nottingham, Professor Sarah Sharples who was the PVC for EDI was a real inspiration. She brought drive and passion and aligned that with an openness that she didn’t know everything about all parts of the job so was learning and relying on the expertise of others. In my last three years at Nottingham we did some great work in this area that I’m really proud of.

Anne-Marie Canning, ex-of Kings and now CEO of The Brilliant Club is always great to listen to in terms of social mobility and getting those who don’t traditionally take part in higher education into universities. And Kehinde Andrews from Birmingham City Uni is a great polemic voice in terms of the black student and staff experience of higher education.

But to be fair there’s brilliant people across the sector. I think the key thing is to try and get out and hear as many voices as possible so you’re getting a range of inputs - whether that’s from conferences, podcasts, HE specific websites, or just on Twitter.

Most important book you’ve read?

I loved Matthew Syed’s “Rebel Ideas”, and I’ve just finished Margaret Heffernan’s “Uncharted” which is about embracing uncertainty which I think we can all get on board with after the last couple of years.?

But if I had to recommend one book for people to read now I’d say go and get Jared Yates Sexton’s “The Man They Wanted Me To Be”. It’s a book about toxic masculinity set against the rise of Trump in America and I think it's got lots to tell us about why we have some of the cultural and societal issues we experience.