This Academic Staff Handbook Is Intended to Provide You with the Information That You Will

1

UNIVERSITY OF WARWICK

Department of Politics and International Studies

STAFF HANDBOOK 2006-7

Contents

Citizenship and Your Career p.3

The challenges of contemporary academic life p.3

Brief history of the department p.4

Mission statement p.6

Research and getting published p.7

First steps towards a research grant p.11

Teaching and its delivery p.15

Examinations and examination procedures p.18

Dissertation supervision p.21

First year arrangements p.21

Plagiarism p.23

Governance p.25

Administrative list and job descriptions p.27

Salary structure p.36

Appraisal and promotion p.36

Absence and leave p.38

Health and safety p.40

Data protection p.41

Copyright p.45

Library p.48

Financial regulations p.49

This academic staff handbook is intended to provide you with the information that you will need to successfully carry out your duties as a teacher, researcher and administrator in the Department of Politics and International Studies (PAIS) at the University of Warwick. It is particularly directed at new entrants, but much of the information should be of assistance to more established staff. Please note that a considerable amount of relevant information is provided on the University website, the departmental website and in some cases by external bodies. References to these web locations will be made throughout the document and an electronic copy will be loaded on to the staff resources section of the website so that you can click on to the relevant locations.

Citizenship and Your Career

Academics still enjoy considerable autonomy in how they organise their working time. Their contracts and University rules and regulation only provide a broad framework that provides some constraints on their conduct. In practice, departments operate through continually revised customs and practices and it is those customs and practices to which this guidebook provides an introduction.

Being a member of a department, in this case a department that has a track record of success in research and the provision of teaching and learning, carries rights and obligations with it. Each of us has our own individual goals, but we also form part of a collective entity which functions much better if we cooperate with each other. Some of the things you may be asked to do may seem to be a distraction from more important or interesting tasks, but the department would not operate well without them.

We have appointed members of staff who have demonstrated their interest in the study of politics and international relations by undertaking and publishing high quality research. A free rider might benefit in the short run by neglecting research and administrative duties and so transferring part of the cost of the research on to others. This is both unfair and inefficient since more time is lost to others than is gained by the person who does this. A good departmental citizen carries out his or her teaching and administrative duties conscientiously.

The challenges of contemporary academic life

It is a common human ambition, particularly for the well educated, to want to ‘make a difference’. Academics at the beginning of the 21st century in British universities face an increasingly pressurised environment. Successive research assessment exercises have led to an increasing emphasis on producing a given number of pieces of research output, preferably refereed journal articles in leading journals or monographs published by leading publishers, within a limited time period.

There are, of course, benefits from having a critical mass of researchers in one location in terms of opportunities for research cooperation, seminar series and the attraction of visitors from overseas, assisted in the case of PAIS by our links with a major ESRC funded research centre, the Centre for the Study of Globalisation and Regionalisation (CSGR). http://www2.warwick.ac.uk/fac/soc/csgr Entrants to most academic departments today face an environment in which they are expected to generate an acceptable level and quality of research output quickly, as well as taking the first steps towards obtaining their own research funding.

These research goals have to be pursued in a climate in which greater attention is paid to excellence in teaching and its measurement through external quality assessment exercises of various kinds. New entrants will generally be expected to undertake a formal course in teaching techniques. This can confer many benefits, and is an advance on a situation where new entrants faced no training at all. However, it increases the time burdens that they face at an early stage of their career. As they pay higher fees, students are understandably going to require consistently high standards of teaching, are likely to make greater demands on staff time and to complain if they are not satisfied or even to resort to litigation. Parents are taking an increasingly active interest in the higher education their children receive and whether it offers value for money. All this contributes to a more demanding environment for staff.

The challenges offered by teaching are reinforced by the fact that the student population is becoming more socially diverse and heterogeneous, not least here in PAIS. The quality of British universities has always attracted students from overseas, but forty years ago they were an exotic minority. At the postgraduate level 37 per cent of research students in 2003-4 were from outside the UK, up from 32.5 per cent in 1998-99. Different cultural backgrounds may mean that additional effort and energy has to be expended on welfare and pastoral care and on issues such as explaining and monitoring plagiarism, although the more cosmopolitan character of the student population offers new opportunities for teaching and learning . .

A more heterogeneous university population necessitates new approaches to learning, a need reinforced by the tendency for students to define themselves as consumers. Expertise in the subject will need to be matched by an ability to communicate effectively in a way that fulfils learning objectives and the requirements of a more instrumental student population. Students will expect the effective use of information technology and virtual learning techniques, although they still value personal contact with teachers.

Brief history of the department

The University was established in 1964, and Politics was among its earliest departments. The first head of department was Professor Wilfrid Harrison who also served as the University’s first (and initially) only pro-vice-chancellor. He was the first editor of Political Studies and had previously been at Oxford and Liverpool.

Staff numbers had grown to twelve by 1971 and steady expansion continued in the 1970s. However, universities were hit hard by the cutbacks in higher education funding following the election of the Thatcher Government in 1979. Warwick responded to this challenge by successfully reducing its reliance on state funding, but these gains were slow to percolate through to the Politics departments and the 1980s were a time of relative stagnation in staff size and composition.

In 1990 the separate departments of Politics and International Studies merged to form PAIS. The formation of a University Graduate School and leadership from within the department led to a substantial expansion of the department’s graduate programme, including the launch of new and highly successful new MA programmes in International Relations and International Political Economy and a substantial expansion of PhD recruitment.

In October 2006 there were 30 full-time staff plus two recognised part-time teachers. (These figures do not include staff in CSGR, some of whom will feature in the department’s RAE entry). At this time there were eight support staff, two administrators and six clerical staff, one of whom works 60 per cent of the time. 850 undergraduates take at least one module offered by the department. In 2005-6 there were 124 MA students in 2005-6 and 48 current PhD students.

Mission statement

Staff members may find it helpful to refer to the benchmarking statement for Politics and International Studies. The original 2000 statement and a proposed draft revision from 2006 are available at:

http://www.qaa.ac.uk/academicinfrastructure/benchmark/statements/drafts/politicsdraft06.asp

Preamble

In this Department we subscribe to a view of teaching and learning which encompasses not only a focus on appropriate pedagogy, access to information and research, but a commitment to critical and analytical thinking. We believe that these are invaluable transferable skills that students should develop during their study in the department, and take away with them.

The Aims

To teach Politics and International Studies of a wide range and high standard, to suitably qualified and able students from varied backgrounds. As a large department, we introduce our students to a wide range of theoretical approaches, empirical studies and methods appropriate to the programme. Various combinations with other disciplines and pathways through our degree take into account different interests, aptitudes, backgrounds, and personal choices.

To provide teaching that is informed by our current research, and which provides choice to students within a coherent integrated curriculum. Important use if made of our own research and current theoretical work. Both undergraduates and graduates benefit from, and we are engaged with, our work in progress through seminar discussions and research seminars. Appropriately trained graduate students may be invited to assist with teaching and research.

A key aim is to equip students with transferable skills and personal development to enable them to meet national and international demands for employment and further study. Together with providing our students with a firm grounding in political analysis, we also equip them with an ability to adapt, supplement, and up-date their expertise. This is done by the opportunity given to second and third year students to engage in a range of project work, such as the third year option to do a dissertation instead of coursework, and a required dissertation for our MA students. The department encourages students to gain and improve their language skills by providing them with opportunity to access appropriate language modules and make use of these within their degree. Seminar programmes encourage team work and the development of a co-operative work ethic.

We seek to encourage critical thinking and develop conceptual, analytical and observation capabilities among all students, and a responsible work ethic (when appropriate) among our students. Students thus gain transferable skills which they can utilise in both vocational and academic settings.

To endeavour to provide an environment where students learn and are able to interact within a multicultural group with sensitivity towards issues of race and gender.

With a large international intake of students, we provide a hospitable intellectual and social environment for the exchange of ideas.

The Objectives

Students graduating from this department should have acquired:

A reflective and critical approach to Politics and International Studies based upon theoretical, empirical and methodological understanding during their study.

A cluster of skills: investigative, evaluative, analytic, communicative and presentational. They should be able effectively to use the library resources, including online resources, write down and use lecture notes, and notes form books and articles and to search the database for references. They should be able to pay attention to detail, follow complex reasoning, construct and explain arguments, listen to others’ arguments, be able to challenge these where appropriate, write essays and reports, and give effective presentations in seminars.

A familiarity with computing facilities in the University, and should have learnt to use e-mail and word processing of text, and be able to access, search and utilise the internet.

An ability to engage with major debates and arguments within the field and ability to identify and further explore areas of interest which they have clarified through their work for their degree.

An ability to work effectively with persons who come from a wide variety of social and cultural backgrounds, and to display sensitivity to issues of race and gender.

An understanding of intellectual integrity in their academic and professional work, including what is meant by plagiarism and why it is unacceptable.

Good working practices. Students should be thorough and painstaking in their work, be able to organise their time and meet deadlines, work under pressure, especially near exam time and to work both independently and in co-operation with others.

Research and getting published

Academics can choose between various different forms of publication of their ideas. Often this reflects opportunities for publication that are offered to you, e.g., after presenting a conference paper you are invited to contribute a chapter to an edited book. One should not, however, accept all the publication opportunities that are presented to ONE without reflection. Time management has to be taken into account and in particular the way in which a small-scale project such as a book chapter which looks as if it could be completed relatively quickly delays work of greater importance in the long term.

In political science, failure to produce a research monograph after a number of years could well count against someone who has a good portfolio of refereed journal articles. A good research monograph is seen as evidence of your ability to write about a problem in depth and hence to make a distinctive contribution to your discipline. Writing such a book represents a major commitment that is likely to extend over a number of years.

Textbooks

The distinction between a research monograph and a textbook is not always a clear one. In part this is because some publishers like to market what are in fact research monographs as if they were textbooks. Of course, the two functions can be combined. A research monograph may also serve as a core reader for an advanced undergraduate option or MA module. However, one has to be careful about a publisher pressurising you to make your book less like a research monograph and more like a textbook. Textbooks do, of course, generate substantially more income in the form of royalties than research monographs which, if they yield any financial return at all, will usually only produce a three figure sum. However, those sums have to be set against the financial gains arising from earlier promotion or securing a permanent post. Moreover, textbooks involve a substantial continuing commitment as they require frequent revision to keep up to date and increasingly are accompanied by web sites that also require maintenance and updating.

Choosing a publisher

The economic environment for publishing academic research monographs has become increasingly difficult. Publishers are finding that financially hard pressed students are confining to purchases to one or at most two textbooks for each course, many of which can be found on the second hand market. Sales of supplementary books for modules have been in a rapid decline. Students are reluctant to buy anything beyond the core textbook for their course. This means that most research monographs rely on library sales. It is in fact still possible to make a profit on a book that sells only 300 copies, primarily library copies, but this usually means a price in the £50 - £60 range. This does not mean that publishers are indifferent to the size of the market for books of this type. They still want to be reassured that the book is of a high academic standard and the material cutting edge or innovative so that it will attract favourable reviews. They will want to be reassured that the author is a recognised or at least emergent expert in the area and that the book has some potential for international sales, particularly in the United States. Having crossed all these hurdles, the high price may mean that fewer people than you would like to may therefore get to read your book, but this may not diminish its value for RAE or promotion purposes.