Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences

Strategy Into Action: Challenges and Risks

Professor Charles Harvey PVC Humanities and Social Sciences

29 April 2013

Strategic Challenges & Critical Tasks

During 2012 we focused on critical tasks required to:

• Achieve & sustain research excellence • Improve our international reputation with investment in new

academic, including professorial, appointments • Deliver a high quality student experience across our UG and

PGT programmes • Develop the relationship with Durham and embed the

Doctoral Training Centre within faculty structures

Cont’d • Deliver high quality improvements to the estate, including

Armstrong, Fine Art and Building Science buildings • Launch the Newcastle Institute for Social Renewal • Develop international strategic partnerships • Embed clear principles for academic workload planning

and deliver development programmes to raise academic staff capability

• Maintain a strong financial performance

During 2013 we will, inter alia, continue to deliver on these tasks.

Challenges in Research

• Ensuring uniformly high level of performance across the Faculty in terms of quality of publications and PI density

• Developing capability for responding to research funding agencies’ increasing focus on large- scale, inter-disciplinary collaborative projects

• Embedding drive, ambition and capabilities for T&R staff members to apply for and win external funding

• Developing a strategic approach to the rapid and continuing development of the “impact agenda”

• Creating clusters of international excellence which build reputation and enable us to attract the best people

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Critical Tasks - Research

• Continue to implement the Faculty Research Funding Action Plan incorporating a more systematic approach to funding applications

• Targeted recruitment and staffing strategy for each school to build strength and reputation in key areas of development

• Establish clear targets for research inputs/outputs through the PDR and school planning processes

• Configure our 2014 REF submissions to secure, and where possible enhance, our positioning vis-à-vis our competitors

KPI ‘Gold Measures’ - Research

KPI Measure

Value of new awards / FTE

‘Order book’ value

% Staff regularly publishing at internationally excellent levels

Proxy for research performance prior to REF 20XX

% R&T staff returned in REF

Proxy for research quality & volume

Submission rate for FT doctoral students within 4 years

Strength of ‘graduate school’

Number of PGR awards / FTE

Strength of ‘graduate school’

Challenges in Learning & Teaching & Recruitment

• Meeting rising student expectations with the £9k fees • Ensuring that students are at the heart of what we do and are

treated as partners in learning rather than customers • Variable NSS/PTES performance with some areas of weak

performance • Contact regimes and consistent delivery of our “offer” • Volatile UG recruitment in the new core and margin regime

and weakening of home PGT recruitment • WP targets hard to meet • Improving student experience of assessment and feedback

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Critical Tasks - Recruitment

• Meeting recruitment targets, home and international, UG and PGT, core and margin

• Managing variability in recruitment across subjects • Achieving a better spread of international recruitment • Increased focus on visit days, post application open days and

conversion activities across all schools • Targeting our undergraduates for postgraduate study – ‘Stay

Here, Go Further campaign’ • New programme development in market facing areas, both

UG and PGT and rejuvenation of existing provision • Addressing changing government policy on teacher training

Critical Tasks - Learning and Teaching

• Insist on high minimum standards of teaching for new and existing staff and recruit staff who are good researchers and teachers

• Embed the concept of ‘research informed teaching’ (what students are paying for) and ensure actual delivery matches promise

• Ensure consistent delivery of small group teaching to undergraduates

• Use module evaluations to enhance teaching • NSS action plans to raise standards and address weaknesses • New e-learning provision in Heritage Management and

Tourism

KPI Gold Measures - Learning and Teaching

KPI Measure

NSS Satisfaction Score

Overall Undergraduate satisfaction

Postgraduate (PRES & PTES) score

Overall PGT and PGR satisfaction

Student : academic staff ratio Proxy for staff contact with students

% feedback returned in 20 days

Feedback performance

Challenges in Developing People and Performance

• Changing the culture to raise ambition to achieve higher

performance and attain ‘world class’ • Communicating and engaging with the vision • Equipping heads to develop and manage staff • Achieving a more metric driven approach to the assessment

of promotions applications and PDR

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Critical Tasks - People and Performance

• Emphasis on performance development review - target > 95% for 2013/14 • Succession Planning • Greater use of metrics in recruitment of senior academic and

professorial positions • Focus on “performance management” and addressing

underperformance • Embed career pathway profiles across all schools • Further engender culture change through developmental

programmes such as Faculty Futures and Unpacking Your Chair to raise academic staff capability

High Profile Appointments: Business School

Professor John Wilson Director

Frank Mueller Professor of Strategy & International Business

Strategy, Organisations and Society Research Group

Chris Carter Professor of Strategy

Andrea Whittle Professor of Management and Organisation Studies

John Sillince Professor of Strategy

High Profile Appointments: Business School

Markus Blut Professor of Marketing

Professor Kathryn Haynes Northern Society Chair in Accounting

Steve Vincent Professor of Human Resource Management

Alan McKinlay Professor of Human Resource Management

High Profile Appointments: cont’d

John Bowers Professor of Creative Digital Practice

Mark Tewdwr-Jones Professor of Planning

Danny MacKinnon Professor of Urban and Regional Development and Economic Geography

T.T. Arvind Professor of Law

Qian Jun Director of the Confucius Institute and Professor of Chinese Studies

Critical Tasks – Internationalisation

• Development of major strategic partnership with Xiamen involving many project strands

• Launch the Confucius Institute and arrival of Director/Professor of Chinese Studies and Co-Director

• Supply Chain Management in Singapore • Developing ‘bottom up’ strategies and action plans for China,

SE Asia, India, Brazil/Latin America, North America • Close working with INTO and agents to maintain recruitment

at a high level and good quality

Specific Faculty Objectives

• Lead the University in developing Social Renewal as a

societal challenge theme • Develop an internationally recognised Business School • Deliver a high profile and internationally recognised Doctoral

Training Centre • Establish the Newcastle Institute for Creative Arts Practice

(NICAP) and realise the full potential of capabilities in distinctive areas of creative practice

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Newcastle Institute for Social Renewal (NISR)

How can individuals, communities and societies thrive when faced with rapid, transformational change?

Director started in April 2012. Progress during NISR’s first year:

• Launch Year events included Great North Build, public lectures, debates, exhibitions, internal events and presentations, and honorary degrees

• Extensive engagement across the University to explain NISR and to identify expertise, enthusiasm and potential. Selection of ten initial priority themes and the appointment of theme champions

• External engagement, nationally and locally (eg councils, LEP, community & voluntary organisations) and profiling, including strong media coverage

• Some initial impacts: Street Law; Rural Economies; Community Champions Awards; and Self-Organised Learning Environments (TED prize)

Launch Year

Launch Year

Newcastle Institute for Social Renewal

NISR Priorities for 2013-14 include: • Supporting activity within the Theme priority areas: eg:

• Coping with welfare reform in NE; The Living Tradition of Civil Rights in the NE; Digital Civics; Widening Participation and Social Mobility; International conference on human rights; Multi-lingual schools poetry competition to celebrate cultural diversity; Measuring wellbeing.

• Embedding a Knowledge Exchange approach across the University: • Training and good practice guides (2013-14) • Policy and Practice Briefings for a targeted external

audience

Cont’d

• Generating impact beyond academia • Working in partnership with stakeholders in policy and

practice • Building expertise and encouraging cultural change

amongst University staff • Continuing to generate strong media coverage across the

breadth of NISR work

• Working with funders, stakeholders and key partners to deliver solutions to real world problems through ‘demonstrator projects’

Business School - Critical Tasks

• Achieved EQUIS re-accreditation for a further three years. • Entering into final stage of AACSB accreditation • Further development of Executive Education and MBA

provision. Planned launch of a Global Experience MBA with partners including Stanford and Copenhagen universities

• Continued academic staff investment to further build international reputation in key areas

• Major international partnership with Xiamen. New planned collaborations in North America, Latin America, Middle East and Eastern Europe

• Focus on student experience, student offer and programme delivery

• AHRC Block Grant Partnership bid (c. £15m) submitted with

Durham and Queens University Belfast • Develop doctoral education with specialist and enhanced

advanced training for all research students • Further improve submission and completion rates for

research council funded students • Embed skills development into doctoral education • Build partnerships with non-HEIs for placements and

employability research training

Doctoral Training Centre - Critical Tasks

• To support transdisciplinary teaching (including new MA in Creative Arts Practice) , research and research projects (eg Ageing Creatively)

• Establish a more coherent approach to external partnerships • Strengthen PGR training for creative practice • Launch planned for June 2013 to link into Festival of North

East • International profile being developed with Xiamen Strategic

Relationship and Confucius Institute around cultural exchanges

NICAP - Critical Tasks

HASS Planning Cycle

Faculty Strategy (October)

School Review (Oct – Nov)

Resourcing (Dec – Jan)

Strategic Development

(April)

Student Planning Numbers

School Staffing Plan

Vision 2021

Budgetary Cycle School strategic

Plans

KPIs School Data

Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences

Strategy Into Action: Challenges and Risks

QUESTIONS AND ANSWERS