Gwen van der Velden
Director
Telephone: +44 (0)1225 383775
Email:
Dear colleague
Re: Head of Student Learning Experience and Quality
Thank you for reading the details of this exciting and ambitious post. This letter is intended to provide more context to the role and a sense of what working here might be like: motivating, academically driven and with students key to the quality agenda.
At Bath we take learning and teaching very seriously. Alongside the successful research intensive nature of the place, we are comfortably in the top five for the NSS, the top ten in all newspaper league tables and of course, in 2011/12 we were University of the Year according to the Sunday Times Good University Guide. Our applications rose this year, despite the downward trend across the wider HE sector. Our graduate destination data is holding up very well even during the current economic climate, and we are growing our international partnerships, indicating how our teaching reputation is also growing internationally.
All this is, of course, achieved by our academic community consisting of motivated, discipline-based staff and a very actively engaged student body. You may already be aware of our impact on the student engagement agenda due to the longstanding ethos of partnership within our academic community. In the NSS (additional questions) we score highest in the country on students’ perceptions of whether their comments lead to action and enhancement, and this is how we drive much of the quality enhancement agenda: our academics work closely with their students on all enhancement activity across every aspect of their education. As a result we’ve been influential in setting the QAA expectations on student involvement and work with the key national organisationsin this aspect. We believe that if quality is driven by learning and teaching principles, rather than procedural considerations, our students will do better. In this role, your contribution would therefore very much rely on your understanding of teaching and learning in the disciplines, and you would lead the quality agenda accordingly.
Working in partnership has beenessential to getting where we are now. To be successful in this post, you must enjoy working with our superb Students’ Union, our inspired Associate Deans, a group of very experienced and able Assistant Registrars who hold the quality brief in the faculties and School of Management, colleagues from administrative services as well as external partners. Our next challenges will come from international collaborations, e-learning and distance learning developments and new insights (Gibbs et al) on how to enable the best quality of teaching. On these aspects, you will work closely with the Pro Vice Chancellor (Learning and Teaching), Professor Bernie Morley and myself, and will find yourself well supported by your experienced and much respected team who have a track record of solid achievement. Moreover, you would be part of a wider team of peers: Dr Helen King, Head of Academic Staff Development, Kyriaki Anagnostopoulou, Head of e-Learning and Maggie Ward Goodbody, who heads up the English Language Centre and is now developing a wider portfolio of academic student support. All in all, the Learning and Teaching Enhancement Office now consists of over sixty people, each of whom makes a contribution to the success of our academic community and the institution as a whole.
The current post holder, James Macdonald, has been in post for three years and will be greatly missed. What James leaves behind is a strong team, a revised committee structure, a strong collaborative network across campus and sound quality management of our taught provision. By the time the new post holder arrives, we will have completed our Institutional Review which takes place in April. Whoever succeeds James will benefit from ample managerial support, opportunities for professional learning and networking, support from peers within the management team and if desirable, mentoring arrangements.
If you are interested in this post and feel you can substantially contribute to the future success of our students and the institution, I really do hope to hear from you. We are ambitious in our appointments, but we know that the best candidates have not always come through conventional professional routes. By all means, contact me directly for further information or an informal chat to help you find out more. I look forward to hearing from you.
Yours faithfully,
Gwen van der Velden