School Manager gives keynote at international conference

In May, Jacqui Mellor from the School of Education and Professional Development attended an international HE administration conference in South Africa to deliver a keynote address on converting from paper based processes to digitisation.  The AUA (the Association of University Administrators, the professional body for higher education administrators and managers in the United Kingdom and Republic of Ireland) encourages and supports its members to attend conferences under a reciprocal agreement with the Association for Academic Administrators (the Southern African equivalent of the AUA).  Although initially a little nervous about applying for one of these fully funded places, Jacqui decided to give it a go because of her interest in the conference’s theme of digitisation – and was pleasantly surprised when they accepted her, even though this gave her only a couple of months to prepare her talk and make her travel plans!  Fortunately, the AUA put Jacqui in touch with their previous representative, who was very helpful and the Association for Academic Administrators were equally supportive and welcoming.

Jacqui’s presentation (“The digitisation of a paper based process at Huddersfield”) talked about where the University improved a system (the annual evaluation of courses) – how we did it, the outcome, what the University and Jacqui learnt from it and how the process now works.  It involved a methodology that involved everyone so that everyone agreed to the change and therefore achieved better results.  The presentation was very well received and Jacqui was inundated with questions until the conference’s closure.  Such discussions were enormously enlightening for Jacqui too and she learnt that were many similarities, with the same HE issues being raised by all the attendees and their universities, despite the difference in their locations.  Indeed, Jacqui noted that although the priority list or scale of problem might differ, the list of challenges faced by university administrators and managers (process improvements, retention, graduate employment, rising student expectations, guidance and wellbeing, student debt, sharing best practice, and reduced funding) is basically the same.  Jacqui also found the rest of the conference speakers very inspiring and the conference very well organised.

After such a great personal and professional opportunity, Jacqui is keen to encourage others to do the same (SROC offer similar agreements to attend other international conferences and in addition to conferences, the AUA also runs study tours).  She would be delighted to help another colleague to be able to take advantage of such “an amazing experience.”