This new University has over 10,000 students on two campuses (soon to consolidate to one). Situated some miles outside a major city it has strong links with industry and has earned a reputation for innovative, vocational courses.
The ISMG review process took place during a period of change, with a new Vice Chancellor recently appointed and changes in the Senior Management Team, academic structure, committee structure and the operation of Council (the governing body).
The new Senior Management Team is smaller than the previous team, and consists of the Director, Deputy Director (Operations), Deputy Director (Academic) and the three Executive Deans of the new faculties. During the period of campus consolidation there are two additional members dealing with this change: a Deputy Director and an Executive Dean.
The previous six faculties consisted of a number of academic departments and each had its own management structure. The three new faculties consist of two or three schools and each has an identical management team consisting of executive dean, deputy dean, heads of schools, head of research and faculty executive manager.
Planning for the restructuring of central service departments has started, with implementation due in time for the 2007-08 academic year.
The committee structure has been refocused. Senate now has four main committees (Quality and Enhancement, Student Experience, Research Degrees, and Research and Enterprise) in addition to the Faculty Boards. Each faculty has a local version of each of these committees which reports both to the Faculty Board and the University College equivalent of itself. A number of other committees, such as Information Strategy, previously reported to a further committee, Planning Board. Planning Board was removed in the restructuring and these committees now report directly to the Senior Management Team. Council committees have also been re-organised, including the formation of a new Resources Committee that includes IT alongside finance, HR and estates.
Reflections
It has been interesting to work through the Toolkit at the same time as Senior Management Team responsibility has been changing. There are some interesting cultural differences between operations in the university sector and the commercial sector, including our emphasis on Information Strategy and the need for an Information Strategy Committee. Most of the changes we will be undertaking could be sourced from either the Toolkit or the influence from the commercial sector, i.e. they both lead to the same outcome. The only difference is the need for an explicit Information Strategy and related committee. We currently are examining whether a committee is the best place to deal with this business as it appears unusual in industry.
Service delivery has come under scrutiny both from application of the Toolkit and from the new Senior Management Team. We have surveyed all staff and students on all services provided by Learning and Information Services (LIS) in order to identify where improvements need to be made. It is interesting that this is a key aspect highlighted for attention by the Toolkit.
The other key area for improvement highlighted by the application of the Toolkit was to ensure that everyone understood the need for, and applied, appropriate project management methods, not just LIS and MIS. This is another key improvement that the Senior Management Team has identified separately as being in need of standardisation across the institution.
The appropriate organisational structure to deliver the services, and the skills of staff as a whole, are areas that have still to be addressed. Again, these were highlighted both by the Toolkit and the new Senior Management Team.