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84 26th
January 2012 ***************************************************** 'Truth:
lies open to all' ***************************************************** Every
fortnight during term-time. All
editorial correspondence to: subtext-editors [at] lancaster.ac.uk. Please
delete as soon as possible after receipt. Back issues and subscription
details can be found at http://www.lancs.ac.uk/subtext. The
editors welcome letters, comments, suggestions and opinions from readers. subtext reserves the right to edit submissions. subtext does not publish material that is submitted
anonymously, but is willing to consider without obligation requests for
publication with the name withheld. For
tips to prevent subtext from getting swept up into your 'junk email folder',
see http://www.lancs.ac.uk/subtext/dejunk/. If
you're viewing this using Outlook, the formatting might look better if you
click on the message at the top saying 'Extra line breaks in this message
were removed', and select 'Restore line breaks'. CONTENTS:
editorial, news in brief, remembering Don Waddell, the university's first
website, book review, letters. ***************************************************** EDITORIAL Normally,
the start of a new year, and the installation of a new Vice-Chancellor, would
provide an ideal opportunity for reflection on the future for our university.
The beginning of this year, though, has been overshadowed by the savage and
senseless murder of Anuj Bidve
in Salford. The nature of the tributes which have been paid to Anuj has been moving and obviously heart-felt; those who
never met him have been provided with an insight into his character by the
dignified reactions of his family members.
The
response of the university, led by our new Vice-Chancellor, has been
everything that we could have hoped for. When accepting the position, Professor
Smith can hardly have envisaged that one of his first duties would be to meet
the family of a murdered student. The tone of his statement, though, and the
plans to commemorate Mr Bidve, showed sensitivity
and sound judgement - which was also demonstrated in Professor McKinlay's remarks in media appearances. Basic
good manners would prompt subtext to offer its best wishes to Professor
Smith, as he embarks on his role at a time when tragedy has been added to
general uncertainty. subtext was established to
reflect a sense of unease within our community at the manner in which
decisions affecting all of us were being taken. Even at the best of times, a
degree of scepticism about the intentions of university managers must be
reflected in a publication of this kind; and one might add that, given the
recent history of this institution such scepticism is particularly necessary
when top decision-makers deliver reassuring public messages. This said, there was good reason to feel heartened by Professor
Smith's opening 'declaration of intent'; and, since the favourable impression
has been reinforced by other evidence (on which see below), it is only right
for our scepticism to be slightly subdued, if not entirely suspended. In
particular, in our view Professor Smith has been judicious in his emphasis on
consultation with all staff. For too long, subtext has reported widespread
dissatisfaction with the way in which key decisions have been taken.
Inadequate consultation has meant that, even when decisions turned out to benefit
the university, the feeling remained that one day we could find ourselves
embarking on a disastrous course without any opportunity of stopping the
process before it had left the drawing board. In these difficult times for
the sector as a whole, it is difficult to resist the suspicion that
consultation has been curtailed not because the workforce as a whole is badly
informed, but because it knows too much. In particular, it is well aware that
Lancaster owes much of its success to the ways in which it differs from other
institutions. Professor
Smith seems well aware that, for someone newly arrived in his position, warm
words are far less important than actions based on firm convictions. If
Professor Smith adheres to his stated intention in the vital matter of
consultation subtext will be strongly supportive. However, well-founded
objections have already been raised on the subjects of the proposed links
between Lancaster and Liverpool, and the Business Process Review which has
already damaged morale among departmental support staff and key
administrators in University House (see subtext 83). The new regime will have
to show that it is ready to act as well as to listen; and, in the meantime,
subtext would be failing in its duty if it allowed the favourable early signs
to induce a suspension of vigilance. ***************************************************** NEWS
IN BRIEF Consultancy It
seems that the new Vice-Chancellor has quickly become aware of the growing
amounts of money we have been spending on external consultancy. Nowadays, few
projects seem to be initiated without the accompanying consultancy
spend, whether this be on recruitment of senior managers or business
process re-engineering. As the VC's memo comments: 'in aggregate the sum is
sizeable and higher than I would expect'. Additional controls are to be
introduced so that we can 'adequately demonstrate value for money', and mean
any proposed expenditure on consultancy of £5k or more will require
justification to and prior authorisation from the VC. Rumour
has it that noses have been put out of joint, particularly within central
administration, but this has to be a welcome and long overdue move. As was
recently reported (5 January, p.13) in the Times Higher, Lancaster spent
£135,000 on 'brand management' consultancy in the 2010-11 financial year,
having spent nothing in the same area in the previous two years. The figure -
obtained under the FoI Act - doubtless was properly
authorised but whether it and much higher levels of consultancy expenditure evidenced
in recent years represent value for money is perhaps a future task for the
Internal Audit Committee. They are likely to have the support of the VC in
his role as 'Accountable Officer' to HEFCE.
******* The
University of Livercaster Another
welcome sign of a more open style of communication from D Floor of University
House was the email to all staff on Lancaster-Liverpool collaboration, to
which were attached the papers considered by Council members at their special
meeting on 11th January. The longest of these was a reflective, discursive
paper by the V-C himself. Taken together, the papers and their covering email
suggest both openness to consultation and open-mindedness about the range of
options for Lancaster in inter-university collaboration. subtext
understands, however, that the messages reaching Liverpool staff from their
vice-chancellor are considerably more confident about links with Lancaster
and more gung-ho about potential benefits, and that the Liverpool VC Howard
Newby told the university's Court last week that Lancaster and Liverpool
would form a federated institution within 18 months. ******* The
purpose of education Readers
may be interested in the e-petition calling for a debate around this topic
which is accessible at http://epetitions.direct.gov.uk/petitions/25505. This
is an initiative of the Campaign for the Public University and follows its
efforts to force a Commons debate on higher education policy. And relatedly, what may be a small piece of good news for the
start of 2012: The Daily Telegraph has a report (23 January) that suggests
that 'David Cameron and Nick Clegg are to abandon radical plans to reform
Britain's university system that would have seen more private firms competing
to educate students', at http://www.telegraph.co.uk/education/educationnews/9034279/American-backed-private-universities-plan-dropped.html.
How good the news is remains to be seen, however, since as Mark Leach, the
editor of WonkHE, suggests in a blog post, 'the
vast majority of Government plans for HE can still be achieved without
primary legislation', at http://www.wonkhe.com/2012/01/24/he-bill-to-be-dropped/.
******* Nuclear
magnetic resonance A
subtext drone attended the Christmas Conference of the Faculty of Science and
Technology, at which, as reported in subtext 83, our new vice-chancellor gave
a paper on his research. subtext didn't understand
much of it, but found Professor Smith's enthusiasm for his topic infectious.
He opened by saying that he had been glad that at Warwick senior managers
were expected to continue to be active researchers, and he clearly wants to
continue to be one as far as possible. He was generous and complimentary
about the PhD poster show held in association with the Conference. When
on one of his favourite topics he speaks at speed, which makes the technical
stuff even harder to follow. The words are clear enough, but their meaning is
sometimes not. He also has a few verbal tics (as we all do). But he seemed
approachable, looked his audience in the eye, and appeared confident and
pleased to be here. Let's hope the feeling lasts. ******* Assistant
deans Moves
have been initiated from the centre to regularise the position of the
assistant deans of the colleges by, inter alia, making them employees with
fixed hours of work and fixed rates of pay. The present and long-established
position is that assistant deans, usually postgraduate students, are paid a
small honorarium and given rent-free accommodation in their colleges, which
allows them to work flexibly and be available quickly when required. The
proposals - which many believe are motivated mainly by a desire to save
money, though this is officially denied (and in any case might not have that
effect) - seem to have been met with pretty much united opposition from
college and university deaneries, and are now the subject of further
discussion. ******* Lancaster's
Roll of Honour Lancaster
was well represented in the 2012 New Year Honours List. Hearty
congratulations to June Coulson, who receives the
MBE for services to higher education, and Ian Miller who has been awarded the
same honour for services to Ultralow Temperature Physics. subtext
was delighted to learn that Rachel Cooper has also been honoured, with an OBE
for her services to education. We
were thinking that it would be immodest for us to take any credit for any of
these awards, and that it was probably no more than a coincidence that Rachel
Cooper is a distinguished member of the subtext collective. It turns out,
however, that the Rachel Cooper in question has nothing to do with the
collective, and that her award will complement her husband's CBE, awarded in
2001. We would be interested to know how many academic couples have earned
comparable recognition for their independent contributions to scholarship. ***************************************************** REMEMBERING
DON WADDELL One
of the less fortunate legacies of the era of Margaret Thatcher as Prime
Minister has been the emasculation of local authorities. In former times,
town councils and town clerks wielded considerable power and influence in
their localities. Although sometimes used to promote a political agenda (e.g.
Derek Hatton in Liverpool) or for personal advantage (e.g. John Poulson and T Dan Smith in Newcastle), this influence was
generally used chiefly for the good of the town and its inhabitants. Don
Waddell, Town Clerk of Lancaster from 1955 to 1979, who died on 26 December
2011, was very much in the latter category. As noted in LU-Text 549, Don
Waddell was instrumental in the creation of St Martin's College, now the
University of Cumbria; he was also involved in the foundation of the Duke's
Theatre; but of more direct interest to us is his promotion of the idea that
there should be a university at Lancaster. This is well described in the book
'Quest for Innovation' by Marion McClintock, from which the following notes
are drawn. In
the late 1950s, there was much debate nationally about investment in higher
education and the possible location of new universities. Shortly after he became
Town Clerk, Don Waddell began to look for a site for a university at
Lancaster. He managed to persuade the hospital authorities of the Royal
Albert Hospital in Lancaster to release the whole of their site, provided a
replacement could be established. However (as he told Marion McClintock
later) he realised while travelling back from a meeting with the County
Council in Preston that Lancaster might lose the contest to Blackpool if it
did not have a virgin site to offer. He therefore took the personal initiative
of approaching Mr and Mrs Barton Townley, the
owners in 1961 of Bailrigg Mansion, and within a
few hours he had persuaded them to sell. Not only that: the City had a
suitable sum of money available to buy the Mansion and grounds. Not long
after this, the City Council bought St Leonard's House, the former premises
of Waring and Gillow, for
factory units; it was able to lease part of this to meet the needs of the
University until the permanent buildings at Bailrigg
were ready. It
may not be too much to say that, without the actions of Don Waddell in the
late 1950s and early 1960s, there would be no university at Lancaster. So
much time has passed since these events that very few members of congregation
at the memorial service for Don Waddell on 10 January can have remembered the
excitement and drama that must have attended them - but every member of this
University owes him a great debt of gratitude. ***************************************************** THE
UNIVERSITY'S FIRST WEBSITE Contributed
article by Mike Cowie (ISS) [Eds: The recent changes to the university's web pages
prompted interest in the subtext warehouse about the websites of the past, so
we are happy to have this contribution from someone eminently well qualified
to answer our queries.] For
us at Lancaster, the internet started during the last year or two of the
1980s. At first there was a just a means of getting to it via a gateway in
London, and it was impressive for a while to get login prompts from computers
thousands of miles away. Shortly after, the University was connected
directly, but there wasn't that much that you could do other than get the
occasional computer file from across the world. The
first actual set of web pages at the University were
set up in late 1991, by the Department of Computing. As several of the postgrads in that department went walking with the
University's Hiking Club, one of the first major uses for the web was as a
scrapbook to document club trips, and for a year or so a large part of the
University's presence on the internet consisted of student club pages. Not
long after, the main University server was started, and pages started to
build up on it. At
that point, there appeared to be absolutely no one in charge. The front page
had links apparently chosen at random in several lists, and these entries
sometimes had sub-headings. I recall that the Students' Union pages were
listed under 'Local Interest'. However, the front page did have 'Lancaster
University' in big letters at the top - plainly someone had worked out that
the <H1> tag could be used to make massive headers. Just below it, to
one side there was a jagged version of the swoosh logo adorning the page.
Whoever did it had got the proportions wrong, and it looked like slightly
squashed as well as resembling something made out of Lego. In
1993 a World Wide Web Working group was created in University House, and
started meeting regularly to decide what to do about the situation. But by
the summer of 1997 they were still meeting. By then, the University's web
site was so out of date that students at a leading American university
emailed to say how fantastic it was - and got a grateful reply before anyone
spotted the sarcasm. At
that time it still wasn't clear whose responsibility the web pages were, but
Alasdair McKee, the newly appointed Information Officer, felt that something
needed to be done. He approached me, and we came up with a plan: I would use
my fairly basic technical and graphics skills,
reorganise the site and make it look better, and Alasdair would have an
editorial role and use his educated Scottish accent to convince those in
charge around the University that we knew what we were doing. That
led to the University's first proper website, which looked like this (http://www.lancs.ac.uk/staff/cpamfc/firstwebsite/firstwebsite.htm),
and went live in late 1997. However, it was only ever a stop-gap until a
second, better site could be created. Alasdair and I created a second design
idea (http://www.lancs.ac.uk/staff/cpamfc/firstwebsite/secondwebsite.htm),
which was a bit more sophisticated. But things started to make more progress
in early 1998, when our HoD, Professor Shepherd,
funded former postgraduate student Claire Beegan
for 3 months to implement a far larger site, developed from our second
design, which would cover most of the basic details that people now expect
from any institutional publicity and information website. This
new site had to be passed by Senate, and unfortunately we hadn't considered
how this would actually happen. On the day of its assessment, we were told
that they didn't want a computer in the Senate Room, didn't want to go
anywhere to view a computer screen, and didn't want anyone involved with the
project in the Senate room while they were discussing it. Claire printed out
key pages from the site and put them into a smart plastic folder to make them
look more presentable, and so the Senate discussed their new website while
looking at our hastily assembled printed brochure. The
example site that Claire had made for the day featured a single composite
image on the home page, depicting two buildings and a new graduate - a man of
East Asian origin. We heard later that a lot of the discussion in the Senate
room was about who and/or what ought to appear in this image. In the end, we
were told that the Senate had approved the site, but had decided that there
should be no representations of people on the front page of the University
web site at all. So the person was replaced with yet another University
building. It
seemed an odd decision: a University website front page with no people shown
on it. Besides, we had had conceived of the site in a way that would have
made it very easy to replace the main image regularly, to keep the site
looking fresh, so we hadn't placed emphasis on any single picture. I don't
know whether the 'no people' decision was policy, as University House took
over the running of the web site and we had no further dealings with it.
However, there were no images of people on the front page of the Lancaster
University web site from 1998 until 2006, when the web site that Claire had
created was finally replaced. ***************************************************** BOOK
REVIEW 'Shaping
the Future: A History of The University of Lancaster 1961-2011', by Marion
McClintock (University of Lancaster, 2011) We
refer above to Marion's history of the first ten years of the university,
'Quest for Innovation', which was published in 1974. Her new book also starts
with the university's foundation, but brings the story up to date. Compared
with its predecessor, the new history looks like what used to be called a
'coffee table book', with its large format and plentiful illustrations; but,
while not quite as densely documented as 'Quest for Innovation', it is
another deeply scholarly work. As the University's honorary archivist, and 'a
long-time member and servant of the university', to quote from Paul Wellings' foreword, Marion is uniquely placed to write
such a history, and draws not only on archival material but, occasionally but
tellingly, on her own recollections of events. The
book is organised thematically, and its seven substantive chapters cover
governance, strategic planning, academic culture, the student experience,
research, finance and the 'physical domain'. By design, the chapters can be
read independently rather than in sequence, which inevitably leads to some
repetition, but no more than is helpful in enabling the reader to keep track
of developments. Events at Lancaster are consistently and helpfully set
against the background of changes in national higher education policy. Her
comments on the latter allow the reader an insight into Marion's own views -
notably, that encroachment by the centre on universities' autonomy in matters
of governance is always likely to be unhelpful. Generally, in dealing with
events at Lancaster, Marion's tone remains dispassionate, so that the
occasional expressions of firm opinions are the more impressive: for example,
on p. 65, in the chapter on 'Academic culture', she notes 'the propensity at
Lancaster for frequent alterations to structures', which she thinks means
that the present arrangement is unlikely to last for long. Marion
writes in her preface that the last two chapters, on finance and 'physical
domain', might be expected to be 'quite technical - even dry'. They are
indeed pretty technical, but with Lancaster's history of drama and crisis in
matters of funding and building they are far from dry. The chapter on finance
includes an account which makes the financial meltdown of the mid-1990s - and
the recovery from it - as intelligible to the lay reader as any account
could, and Marion's expertise in architectural matters informs and enlivens
her account of the evolution of the campus into its present, still changing,
shape. Two
small subtextual quibbles. Our great predecessor 'Inkytext' is quoted extensively on the financial crisis,
and the reader is directed in a footnote to other issues of that journal, but
it appears in the text without introduction or explanation, and with no
mention of its editor and main author, Gordon Inkster. And the entertaining
recollections of David O'Dell of his time at Lancaster (1966-69) are quoted
in the chapter on the student experience without reference to their place of
publication (subtexts 57-61 and 63-68). But we are a forgiving collective,
and this is a readable, authoritative and worthwhile book. ***************************************************** LETTERS Dear
subbers, subbees and the
subbed, In LUText 548 I read yet another complaint from an unnamed
source about parking in Hazelrigg Lane causing
'issues of safety' and upsetting local residents. I even read that the
university has been spending money to alleviate the issues raised because of
parking in that area. I have also noticed, as I drove into and out of the
university, a couple of hundred empty parking spaces next to Hazelrigg Lane, even closer to where students actually
want to park, and sited to be safe and not upset local residents. It seems obtuse not to put 2 and -2
together and let one problem solve the other. Has
the university - and this is just a suggestion - considered letting students
and staff park closer to where they live or work without charging the fee it
is currently charging? It's obviously not getting that fee paid anyway since
most of the spaces are vacant. Given the number of empty space in the car
park most days (exceptions could be made for Graduations, Open Days, and
other days when every space is needed) I can only blame any problems in Hazelrigg Lane on whoever insists on collecting the
parking fee. Simon
Slavin Lonsdale
College ******* Dear
subtext, You
are right to be very worried by the Business Process Review. The centre notes
that we have proportionately more administrative staff than many other
universities - but have they considered the possibility that it may be we who
have got this right? After all, we are a very successful university - maybe
this is in part because we are by and large well administered? Many certainly
believe this in LUMS, where the number of administrators is proportionately
at its highest. There is also a strong belief that the devolved
administrators - those in faculties and departments - are far better attuned
to the requirements of both academics and students than many of those in the
centre. This is hardly surprising - even a very good administrator in the
centre is just too far from the action. There
are several examples I could quote to support this, but one especially
telling revelation has come from the National Student Survey. The section of the survey that correlates
most strongly with overall satisfaction (far more than anything else) is the
section on how well the course is run, how good the communication is etc.
This is something that our students rate us very highly on - they know what
they are supposed to be doing, when, where, how and why, and are confident
that they will be properly informed if things have to change. They get very
little of this from the centre - it's the departmental and programme teams
that are key here. However,
our current boss (at the time of writing), the acting VC, has long been of
the opinion that there are far too many administrators around. He is very
keen to rationalise, centralise and reduce. This may (perhaps) produce a
short-term financial gain, but it will severely reduce our effectiveness as
well as placing extra burdens on academic staff. So, if you are reading this,
Bob, in the spirit of the panto season, I implore
you not to kill the goose that lays the golden eggs! Mike
Wright Management
Science [Eds.
A petition has been started against the job losses that are likely to result
from the Business Process Review, at http://www.ipetitions.com/petition/save-our-admin-staff/.] ******* Dear
subtext, In
your article on Senate effectiveness, you rather disparagingly refer to
Faculty Associate Deans as 'officers' and suggest that they have no place on
Senate. I strongly disagree. Associate Deans are well placed to understand
the views and requirements of both administrators and academics - after all,
they are academics who are still actively involved in both teaching and
research - and thus one of their key functions is to try to act as a link
between the two groups of people. It is therefore crucial that they attend
Senate. As a former Associate Dean I always regarded myself as a backbencher
on Senate, definitely separate from the bigwigs in the middle. Though
an important role, it's not an easy one: I was at times regarded by academic
colleagues as a bit of a management lackey, and frequently by administrators
as a dangerous radical and irritating thorn in their sides. So I think I got the balance about right. Mike
Wright Management
Science ***************************************************** The
editorial collective of subtext currently consists (in alphabetical order)
of: Rachel Cooper (PPR), Mark Garnett, George Green, David Smith, Bronislaw
Szerszynski and Martin Widden. |