4 minute read
SENDING THE LIFT BACK DOWN: DEVELOPING A SCHOLARSHIP TEAM WITHIN A UNIVERSITY CAREERS SERVICE
Lynne Johnson, Learning and Professional Development Manager at The Open University (OU), describes the journey the service took in developing a scholarship team and shares the lessons learnt, from the challenge of getting practitioners on board to developing protocols for pitching ideas to the management team.
Stand up if you: consider yourself to be a curious person; have knowledge of students’ career motivations and barriers that academics may not be aware of; often find yourself asking why students think or behave in a certain way and whether things would be better if you did them this way or that. Sit down if you feel that research, for whatever reason, is not for you.
This is how I launched our Scholarship Team at The Open University Careers and Employability Services (CES) conference in May 2019. We saw nearly all the 50+ people in the room launch themselves to their feet, only to sit back down again. I asked those interested in joining a scholarship group in CES to add their name to the flip chart as they left the room. I left with just two names.
NEW BEGINNINGS A year later we have a CES Scholarship Team comprising 12 members, most of whom are currently active in some sort of employability-related scholarship. If you already have an active and thriving scholarship team within your careers service, you may be interested to see if any of the challenges we faced resonate with you, or whether you approached it in a different way. On the other hand, if your service is not involved in research, you might be interested in why we felt we needed a scholarship team and how we grew it from such tentative beginnings.
WHY DID WE BOTHER? The increased focus on student employability has encouraged academics to undertake research on students’ employability needs, employer engagement and skills development. At the OU, an Employability Scholarship Network was established to encourage this type of exploration. We noticed, however, that the voice of the careers professional was absent, even though our bread and butter work involved speaking to students about exactly this. Our insight was not being sought or shared; we needed to claim our professional expertise and take our place at the scholarship table.
WHAT WAS STOPPING US? As an operational team, our focus is on delivery and there is no time allocation or budget in our roles for research. There was no protocol of how to move to a more research-focused culture – no road map to
get from A to B. The biggest barrier, though, was psychological: an internal voice holding many of us back and telling us we weren’t clever enough or that research was not for us.
REFLECTIONS We recently held a Scholarship Team meeting and reflected on the difference the group has made. One practitioner described how seeing and hearing others within the group going out and getting involved in different research projects gave her the confidence to take the first steps into active research. It’s a bit like the French phrase faire descender l’ascenseur’, she said – send the lift back down. When people have gone up, broken the glass ceiling and benefitted, it is important to send the lift back down so others can follow
We are a small but growing group, finding our place at the research table and sending the lift back down for those who want to join us.
/in/lynne-johnsoncareersprofessional Lynne.johnson@open.ac.uk
For those of you considering embarking on the same journey, here are our top tips:
Expect it to take several attempts to encourage people before they come forward. We hosted an academic talking about the institutional approach to scholarship; looked at examples of scholarship; and heard other careers practitioners’ stories as they moved into research. We followed up with those who attended these events and asked them what was stopping them joining. We flew the scholarship flag and we kept it flying high.
Don’t wait until you have all the answers in place and a written protocol of how you will do it and what it will look like. Work it out as you go along. We set up a Scholarship Team in Microsoft Teams and started by sharing why research interested us and what we felt might get in the way, such as lack of time. A slow start, but a start none the less.
Hold regular meetings with your growing group to create momentum and share ideas, knowledge and experience. Keep minutes, identify actions and follow them up. You have to work hard to create momentum when the ball is not yet rolling.
Link up with other parts of the university who are already involved in research. We joined training sessions for research staff on research methodology, found mentors and joined academic research teams who welcomed our insight.
Identify the strategic priorities of your service and link any research ideas to them. We developed a pitch form linking an idea to a CES strategic priority to get buy-in from the management team. It made a difference to be clear about the costs in terms of time and money and how these can be weighed against the strategic aims.
