Departmental Management Arrangements 2002/3 onwards
Martin Henson, Head of Department
1Introduction and Background
There will be some changes to the organisation/management of the Department next year. There are various reasons for this:
- The Department is continuing to grow, both in student numbers and in staff.
- The Institution is becoming more explicitly strategic in its planning and, over the last three years or so, has required more of the same from Departments.
- There is a need to split monitoring/bureaucracy/short-term planning from strategic/long-term planning.
- I feel the needfor amore inclusiveapproach to management.
Of these, the second is probably the most important. Three years ago, Anne had a planning questionnaire to fill in, the following year I was asked for a more broad-ranging strategic plan (not involving research though); this year that has become more formalised, included research and involved a longer time-frame. It would seem that we are now reaching the kind of model that will become standardfor the future:a 5-year rolling plan covering Curriculum, Research and Resources (both financial and human). It will become more and more difficult to motivate ad-hoc developments in Departments in the future that are not in some sense anticipated by our Departmental Plans. We will be increasingly expected to be anticipating change and planning forit. So far so good: when things have cropped up in the last couple of years (staffing, equipment funding, research student fee-waivers etc.)the cases have been put in the context ofboth our own plan and the University's Strategic Plan, and this strengthensourarguments. Parenthetically, it's worth pointing out that our plan (andthose from other Departments) now inform the revision of the University plan -- as a consequence we have the ability to influence, to some extent, the direction of the University, and then can use the presence of these influences in the University Plan to our own advantage infurthering our own agenda.I hope I am conveying the increasing importance of strategic planning, not only as an obligation upon us, but also as a mechanism for ensuring that we continue to benefit from available University resources.
It is, however, no longer sensible for me to try to synthesize the revised plan each January on the basis of informal information gathering, and an implicit reference to our various committees: we now need to build the planning into the fabric of what we do.
2Managing the Curriculum
In the last year, in the area of the curriculum,we already separated short-term issues such as monitoring and revising, fromlonger term and strategicissues in the curriculum, by creating UG and PG management committees. It is time toformalise that with a change of titleemphasising the role the smaller executive committeeis to play.
Curriculum Strategy Group (CSG) (formerly Curriculum Committee)
Remit: Responsible for the overall management and development of the Department's curriculum
Reports to: RSG (annually in December) and DM (termly)
Sub-committees: UGMC and PGMC
Membership:
Ex-officio:
Deputy HoD (Teaching) [Chair]
HoD
Director of UG Studies
Director of PG Studies
Quality Assurance Officer
+ 1 elected member
3Managing Departmental Resources
The resources committee began life simply to plan the spending of the equipment budget. During the last 12 months I have moved some aspects of human resources, that concerning CO andtechnical staff, into its remit. It has received requests from CC in the past. In the future this committee will become the senior committee in the Department and will consider all aspects of Departmental resourcing, both financial and human.The HoD will chair it in future. It will be responsible for the annual revision of the Departmental Plan and Annual Operating Statement (list of objectives for thenext academicyear) for Budget Sub-Committee (BSC) or the Vice Chancellor’s Advisory Group (VAG), as it is also known.Where sensitive staffing issues are concerned the meeting will operate a closed agenda and such minutes will not be reported to the DM. In order to ensure thetimely processing of routine butad-hoc resourcing requests (those for which there is no agreed system) there will be a resources panel: this is more-or-less what happens now.
Resources Strategy Group (RSG) (formerly Resources Committee)
Remit: Responsible for the overall resource management and strategy of the Department.
Reports to: DM (termly), BSC (annually in January)
Receives reports from: CSG (annually in December), RhSG (annually in December)
Sub-committees: Resources Panel
Membership:
Ex-officio:
HoD [Chair]
Deputy HoD (Teaching)
Deputy HoD (Research)
Senior Computer Officer
Departmental Administrator
+ 1 elected member of the senior staff
4Managing Research
The role PVC (Research and Business Development) has become more and more explicitly managed. There are many reasons why we need to move in step with this.
- We are asked more often, and in more detail, for our individual research plans.
- External pressures to achieve certain measurable research outputs are unlikely to diminish, and are likely to broaden, for example in so-called 3rd-arm (industrial) funding.
- Up tonowsupport and management of research has been undertaken by the HoD and Deputy HoD (Research) informally.
- We currently have two committees,theResearch StudentManagement Committee and theResearch Student Progress Committeewhich "float" in the Department: not reporting to any committee or group.
- We now have an academic administrative duty concerning Industrial Liaison.
- We have an obligation to provide a Departmental Research Plan on (at least) an annual basis.
In order to bring all these things together we will establish a research strategy group. Where sensitive staffing issues are concerned, the meeting will operate a closed agenda and such minutes will not be reported to the DM.
Research Strategy Group (RhSG)
Remit: Responsible for the management and support of research in the Department
Reports to: RSG (annually in December) and DM (termly)
Sub-committees: RSMC, RSPC
Membership:
Ex-officio:
Deputy HoD (Research) [Chair]
HoD
Director of PG Studies
Director of Industrial Collaboration
+ 1 elected member
All the three strategy committees will have an elected member. There will be an opportunity to (self) propose these three representatives shortly. If there is over-subscription, then there will be an election. Please note that, in thecase of the RSG, the member must be a senior member of staff-- this is inevitablebecausethe human resource issues will be similar (though not related) to those considered by SSM. We will set this up in the very near future so that other duties can be assigned.
5The Departmental Context
The status of the Departmental Meeting remains unchanged of course. The DM is the conscience of the Department and expects to be able to monitor and comment on any aspect of Departmental life. DM offers everyone an opportunity to place items on the agenda and to discuss issues widely. In future, and in order to allow the most efficient use of time (DM meetings now often run for several hours), standing items on the agenda will be operated on a starring basis. There willno longer be oral reportsfrom CC and RC, and informal oral reportson research and industrial liaison. These will be replaced by the open minutes and the papers of the relevant meetings (in the case of CC and RC, these are already attached to DM papers). Members of staff who wish to raise issues, or ask questions, arising from these minutes and papers may star the items (preferably in advance). It will be assumed that all non-standingagenda items are automatically starred,since these willhave been placed on the agenda with the specific objective ofexplicit discussion.
In particular the Departmental Plan will be presented to the DM at the first meeting following its submission (in practice this means it will be circulated to all staff in February of each year and discussed at the Summer Term DM). The production of this plan will be a major responsibility of RSG and ultimately, as it is now, of the HoD. By revising the management of the Department in this way, planning becomes integrated into the way in which we run the Department. Furthermore, the whole Department can be involved in debate and discussion through the termly reports of the three strategy groups to the DM.
I hope that these new arrangements will be more effective, and more democratic, than those we currently operate.
Departmental Meeting (DM)
Remit: To monitor and advise on all aspects of Departmental life.
Receives reports from: CSG (termly), RhSG (termly), RSG (termly)
All academic staff
Senior CO
Departmental Superintendent
Departmental Administrator
GTA representative
RO representative
Senior Staff Meeting (SSM)
Remit: To consider and to make recommendations in respect of the annual review of academic staff
All senior academic staff
6Changes to other functions
We are obliged to have Scheme Directors for all our degree schemes. This was fine when we had few schemes, but is now unworkable with so many. Last year I combined many UG scheme directorships into a single person. This seems to have been successful. Next year we will go further -- there will be Deputy Directors of UG and PG studies who will take over the responsibilities of the scheme directorships of the various schemes. They may take over some other duties too, particularly at the PG level whereduties seem to be considerably more onerous than at UG level. This also provides us with a degree of succession management -- with the deputies taking over the reins of power in due course.
MCH 1.7.02
M:\ADMINISTRATION\Strategy\Departmental Management Arrangements 2002.doc