TRANSITION TO COLLEGES

Delivering professional services and support in Colleges

Detailed template for College structures

Background

Between January and the end of March, a group involving College Manager designates, the School Manager for the Business School and the Change Manager met to develop a template for how professional services in Colleges will be organised from 1st August. The group achieved it aims of:

  • Agreeing the principles around what professional services and support is delivered in the Colleges
  • Agreeing broad functions all Colleges will have in common
  • Agreeing a high-level structure for how the functions will be delivered
  • Agreeing a description of what each team broadly delivers
  • Agreeing the next steps in the transition process
  • The group is continuing to explore options for providing services and support on the Cornwall and St Luke’s campuses where Colleges working together may deliver significant benefits to staff

Work carried out under 'work stream 2' looking at the interface issues between central Professional Services and Colleges hasprovided further input to the structures.

The group is on track to deliver the final template by the 14th May as planned, and ian indicative structure and team load for the structures in Colleges.

Rationale behind developing a common model

Part of the rationale behind the College restructuring was to create academic units of approximately the same size with an equality of resources.

Professional services structures in Schools have evolved and grown organically over the past five years. Looking at the structures for each, there are a significant number of areas where there is commonality across the Schools. Because of the different sizes there are also areas of inconsistency, and the Transition to Colleges provides us with an excellent opportunity to explore whether further commonality can be achieved.

The College restructuring generates an opportunity to introduce a simple professional services model shared by all Colleges, whilst recognising the need for variations to a common theme as subject discipline, unique market contexts and different developmental needs will require Colleges to adopt the model flexibly and subject to the availability of funding and/or resources. The physical location of disciplines within a College may also play a part in this.

The benefits of a common model are:

  • a clearer professional profile around areas of expertise. A common approach to professional services structures in the Colleges generates a number of opportunities around personal and career development, structured training opportunities, informal network and movement across the institution which will not only benefit individual role holders but the Colleges and institution as a whole;
  • more effective communication and working together between staff in the institution with the same areas of functional expertise. The creation of a common set and description of key professional services roles will create a shared understanding of these roles across the institution. It will lead to more effective communication between College and corporate professional services;
  • more clarity around the corporate professional services delivery within Colleges. A common College professional services structure will also enable a more systematic approach and implementation of professional services hub and spoke models, shared services initiatives and cross College approaches on the different campuses;
  • a consistency in student and academic staff experience and greater responsiveness to all stakeholders’ needs
  • a shared professional services culture across the institution, with an opportunity to for example apply for IiP accreditation across the institution.

So, adopting a common model is not simply standardisation for its own sake, but in order to remove any administrative hurdles in the way of collaboration between Colleges and between Colleges and central management teams and services and in the way of offering a consistent and excellent student and staff experience.

Although Colleges will be aiming to have as much commonality as possible, we recognise the need to leave flexibility to deal with College-specific contexts. The size and shape of each team within a common model may vary depending on the portfolio of individual Colleges and the constraints of the overall resource envelope.

The review also provides us with the opportunity to review the administrative roles carried out by academic staff and whether these can be streamlined, releasing academic staff to help build research capacity. Further analysis and discussions with College Executives will continue to shape our thinking around these roles.

Detailed model

The work undertaken as part of the transition process has resulted in a detailed model for how professional services and support will be delivered in the Colleges, described in this paper. The template details the superstructure we intend to develop for each of the Colleges as well as a description of the remit of each of the teams.

In the detailed model, the College Manager is responsible, amongst other things, for the smooth day to day running of the professional services in the College and exercises line management authority for all non-academic staff in the College, with appropriate delegated authority. The College Manager will be assisted by a College-based Professional Services Management Team (PSMT) which will meet regularly to ensure close coordination, communication and forward planning between functional teams.

Individuals and organisational units in the College’s professional services team and in the wider University professional services’ teams will work closely together, and this partnership approach will also extend to working with academic colleagues within and between Colleges.

The equal and overarching importance of the strategic and operational elements of both education and research is now reflected in the additional leadership capacity in the College Executive Team, with a strategic Associate Dean for Education joining the traditional and expanded Director of Research role reflected in the Associate Dean for Research and Knowledge Transfer. Teams will be set up to support each of these areas, working closely with the Associate Deans and with other teams to ensure that the service evolves flexibly and responsively to deliver College plans.

In addition to these activities, the College is required to plan and manage the strategic use of its wider resources, relationships and reputation. In order to achieve this, two further core teams will be set up – an Infrastructure and Technical Services team, focusing on inter alia space, physical plant, technical support, IT and capital planning, and a Communication and External Relations team, focusing on inter alia international and national profile, stakeholder engagement, alumni relations and projects. The transition to Colleges has provided us with an opportunity to recognise the importance of providing enhanced support for these areas, which have in the past been more reactive and under-resourced than is ideal.

The professional services model is therefore based around these four functional areas, whose teams will work together to provide excellent professional and support services within the College. Each functional area will be led by one or more experienced manager(s), all of whom will report directly to the College Manager. Under the combined leadership of the College Executive, all functional teams will work seamlessly together to deliver the strategic and operational requirements of the College. There will also be dotted-line reporting to academic leads as detailed in the diagrams below.

Since the detailed model was released for consultation we have further developed our thinking around a GraduateSchool and have opted for 2 models, one for STEMM and one for HASS. The diagrams below detail the changes and two alternative models.

STEMM Colleges

HASS Colleges

The proposed remit for each of the teams is explored in detail below. In pulling together the teams we have given consideration to how each of them maps onto the central professional services teams. In some cases additional team leaders will be identified within large teams to assist the manager in staff supervision, mentoring and/or specific project/task delivery.

Research and Finance Team

This team will be a highly professional and flexible support team which will deliver both the operational financial support for College budget and support for research, pre- and post award, and more widely. In terms of the delivery of strategic agendas (e.g. REF and graduate research), the team will be supported by the Communication and External Relations team.

The team will be headed up by a Assistant College Manager (Research and Finance). This member of staff will report to the College Manager, with a dotted reporting line to the Associate Dean for Research and Knowledge Transfer.

Recognising the importance of stewardship and financial control in the University’s governance, each College will also have a Finance Business Partner, line-managed centrally, who will provide this oversight, as well as acting in the role of critical friend to the College.

Although by necessity working closely with one another and other colleagues, it is proposed that the Research and Finance team will operate as two functional units with overlapping roles to ensure joined-up working throughout.

Financial operations team

The finance side of the function will deliver the core accounting and financial transactional processes required to support students and College colleagues, from payments and payroll to post approval forms and expenses. Staff in this team will monitor the College’s accounts as part of accurate monthly forecasting required within the University of Exeter’s financial framework, and build bespoke reports to provide budget level information to those staff in the College responsible for financial budgets and grant management. They will provide support for both forecasting and the business planning process and deal with purchase ordering. The team will have oversight over finance policy and regulation and coding review and training.

The team will be managed by one or more Finance Manager(s).

Research support team

The research support side of the function (including the income generation team) will be responsible for delivering professional in-College support to grant prospecting and applications processes as well as wider research activity. They will help with staff training and navigation to, or brokering services from, Professional Services colleagues outside the College (e.g. Research Accounting, RKT Office, Contract and Legal), as well as directly costing and assisting with the preparation of all manner of grants and funding proposals. In addition to standard sponsor assistance this team will also work closely with colleagues on fundraising and endowments support, providing bespoke costing and pricing models and liaising directly with donors, or with DARO/Finance colleagues as required.

The team will be responsible for seeking funding opportunities for research students and will initiate payments. They will also deal with research conferences, academic visitors, journal support, calls management and research seminars. College facing staff in the Research accounting and RKT teams may be embedded within the team.

The Research support team will be managed by a Research Support Manager who will be responsible for the College specific costing methodology (development of project costing checklist) and ensuring that the impact of the costing is fed into the business plan. S/he will attend training sessions relating to research management and research policy organised centrally and will refer to central colleagues with specialist knowledge of RC or funding sources. This person will also take responsibility for any staffing implications of the grant on the Colleges budget and will work closely with the Associate Dean and other professional colleagues on the impact and REF agenda.

The diagram on the next page shows how the team might be structured and how the two teams will work together:

Communication and External Relations Team

The Communication and External Relations team brings together a number of activities which it is possible to strengthen within the new College structure. Communication and External Relations will be led by the Assistant College Manager (Communication, internationalisation and external relations), whose brief will include key strategic areas for development in the next planning round, e.g. internationalisation. In leading these strategic areas, s/he will work across the College teams and will manage a number of staff in a hub and spoke set-up.

Communication and External Relations will ideally be co-located with the College Executive. This physical co-location will create a “home” for the College especially when a location is needed for external visitors. (This would not exclude members of the College Executive from also having roaming homes in the buildings and campuses that make up the College. Indeed in terms of College cohesion, “roaming days” would be encouraged.)

Communication and External Relations will provide dedicated executive support to the College Executive team (College Dean, Associate Deans and College Manager) which will help them to fulfil the duties of their office effectively, covering the range of PA duties (diary management, confidential correspondence, travel arrangements etc…) through to the servicing of the College Executive, Professional Services Management Team and College Management Group meetings.

In addition, staff in the team will assist the Dean and College Manager directly in working with the HR Manager and Personnel over maintaining staff records, coordinating and supporting staff recruitment processes and ensuring HR policies and practices are promoted and supported in the College, including PDR process, general HR advice and merit and promotion panels.

The team will also play a vital role in internal and external communications and marketing (including open days, POODS, CRM activity) and the facilitation of small one off projects and events (e.g., VIP visit coordination, Inaugural lecture support, alumni events, careers activities). This team will be the obvious home for the alumni officer which has been agreed with DARO, and will be the locus for the internationalisation agenda, working closely with the Education and Research leads.

For HASS Colleges the team will also house the GraduateSchool activity.

The diagram on the next page details the responsibilities of the team.

Education Support Team

The Education Support team will be managed by the Assistant College Manager (Education)Manager, who will have a dotted reporting line to the Associate Dean for Education. The Education team will support two functions, one focused on students and one on staff. Depending on the size of the student activity and the number of buildings and campuses associated with the College, the functions may be managed differently (e.g. some Colleges may have a number of student facing teams). In essence the team will manage the following functions for taught programmes: student support services, QA and programme management and education policy and management, and also take a lead on employability.

Working with the Associate Dean for Education, this team will be responsible for ensuring that the education we provide and the studentexperience we offer helps our students to develop the knowledge, skills, qualities and attitudes they will need to succeed at University and beyond. We are committed to supporting our students both academically and pastorally and the Education Support team will work with other support teams across the University.

The team will support academic colleagues in promoting new ways of learning utilising information technology, innovative learning spaces and acurriculum in which themes such as internationalisation and sustainability are embedded. They will also supportinitiatives which ensure International students’ needs are met and foster a respectful, culturally aware student body.

The Education Team will work closely with Communication and External Relations to organise, inter alia, recruitment, induction and registration activities, and with colleagues in central Professional Services. We recognise that the exciting student service developments within the Forum project will provide the opportunity for enhanced collaborative working between Professional Services staff centrally and within Colleges. These teams can draw on examples of best practice already existing within the University e.g. the BusinessSchool.

Student Support Centre

These will be the student facing “front of house” and may have a dedicated location per College, per campus and even possibly per building. In addition to its student support role this team may also provide general reception and building support for the building in which it is located. This team will hold the single copy student record file for all students and will be responsible for managing the College’s student records archive.

The centre will be the first port of call for taught students in the College for their administrative interactions with the College. Most importantly, the Student Support Centre would deal with coursework submissions (electronic or otherwise), examinations, marks entry and mitigation (including late submission). The student support centre could at times of high volume activity (e.g. during registration) provide a place for central Professional Services colleagues to deliver services into the College. This may be particularly appropriate for the campuses other than Streatham. Because the Student Support Centre will take the weight of standard and many non-standard student interactions, it will create capacity for academic staff who do not need to deal with student queues. Peaks in activity could also be supported by a team approach in order to manage all concurrent workload peaks. As part of the change management process, work stream 3 has been dedicated to looking at how we manage Student Support Centres pragmatically as part of the transition, but also how we future proof the activities. Increasing the use of self-service for students (e.g. through online submission and feedback) could mean that the Student Support Centres of the future are organised differently.