CAMPUS CATALYST

It’s incredible

to see people who were told they couldn’t do it go on to great things

LIZ BARNES, VICE CHANCELLOR OF STAFFORDSHIRE UNIVERSITY, TALKS TO RT HON JUSTINE GREENING ABOUT COVID, SOCIAL MOBILITY AND THE WORK OF THE INSTITUTION IN HELPING PEOPLE WHO MAY HAVE BEEN WRITTEN OFF IN LIFE TO FINALLY UNLOCK THEIR POTENTIAL.

SPOTLIGHT ON LIZ BARNES AND STAFFORDSHIRE UNIVERSITY Q JG// Tells us about how the last few months have been for the university.

A// They have been difficult as they have been for everybody, but I’m just so proud of how our staff and students have responded and and kept everything going and way beyond that. We had to shift to remote learning. That presents challenges for everybody, particularly for staff and students who are juggling homeschooling, and all that brings with it. But they did that very quickly. Also our support staff put a lot in place. Our digital services team were running out to deliver computers and making sure that students and staff had the technology they needed to engage. Our learning, teaching and support team were working and giving seminars to staff and supporting them in getting up and running for those that were a little less confident in delivering online learning. All of our students support moved to online. So our careers team [were] still providing the same level of support to students in their homes. Mental health support for students, which has been so crucial through this period, has all been delivered remotely. So the whole university operation shifted to operating from home whilst actually we also had a

strong team on campus, making sure that the students that remained here were all looked after and taken care of. Our nursery was up and running throughout the period. In fact, they had children turn up that they’d never seen before, because parents who worked in the NHS suddenly found that the provision they needed might be closed, but they knew we were operating.

Q// As terrible as the crisis was, do you think there will be some positive legacy in relation to how you have been able to better support people remotely?

A// There are a number of things that we’ve learned an enormous amount about and will take forward and look at how we build them into our practice beyond next year. We need to recognise that this period has had a quite significant impact on lots of people - staff and students. I think it’s going to take a long time for us to help people recover from what they faced during the period. As an example from our mental health support, we found that we could provide so much more support when we’re doing some of it remotely. Actually, we can expand our service and reduce our waiting lists by having the remote support alongside where we really need it, the face-to-face. So we’re redesigning our service now.

She had spent her life caring for her parents “ and had never had an opportunity before

Q// Tell us about some of the work that you’ve done to reach those young people and mature students with potential but for whom going to university might have been a pipedream.

A// Stoke-on-Trent in particular really does have some challenges. Nearly 25 per cent of our population of families are in the most deprived in the country. [Many of these families] probably do have aspirations but what they see are the barriers. There are all sorts of things that can happen through their lives that maybe get in the way of young people and then mature people accessing the learning and support they need. It doesn’t mean they don’t have potential. So much is to do with your background and where you live as opposed to your potential and that’s what we’re seeing a lot of. So how do you reach those families that have always thought [university] is ‘not for the likes of us’? How do you get to the people that have had such difficult times in their lives? One project that we’re particularly proud of is [run] with the YMCA. One person who came to us had been a drug addict from the age of 14 and spent all of his life fighting addiction and everything that brings. But he’s now graduated, and went on to do a master’s degree. He then got funding to do some research and he now informs national policies on drugs and drug abuse. We’ve got a student studying with us now, just progressing into his second year, who lived on the streets for four years. He’s been in the armed forces like so many [others] who have great difficulty in adapting to civilian life. We work with YMCA to help these people transition into higher education because it isn’t that they haven’t got the capability and ability. It’s more that they don’t know how, but also that they need that support and transitioning because it’s a long time since they were in school. Then there are others that we work with. Throughout my period working in higher education, I’ve always felt quite emotional when I’ve been doing events, particularly around foundation programmes and transition into university, because you talk to people who tell you stories about how they were written off in school; or how they were told constantly that they weren’t going to make it. Then it just becomes part of what they believe. They believe they can’t do it. There’s something about getting to these people, helping them develop that confidence and belief in themselves, and then seeing them come out the end that’s just incredible. In terms of what they go on to achieve, I could provide a long, long list of the great things that Staffordshire graduates do. But not all of our graduates come here to get into high paid jobs. My vice chancellor’s prize two years ago went to a mature student. She was 58 and had spent her life caring for her parents, and she had some disabilities herself. She had never had an opportunity. At that age, she came and studied with us and when she left she set up an LGBT group within the church, she set up a food bank and she did some postgraduate study with us part time. In terms of her confidence and that giving back element, and getting more engaged with society, it was fantastic. But her ambition was never to earn lots of money it was about, ‘this is my time, this is my chance to develop me and do something for me. And I know I can do it’.

Q// And many of your students want to give something back once they’ve been given an opportunity.

A// Yes [it’s about] leaving the doors open behind you. So often the stories you hear are about the doors being closed very early in life, and it’s just so sad that our young people coming through feel written off at an early age.

Q// Staffordshire does a lot of work encouraging people to become students who may have never felt it was a possibility. But there are also lots of things you do as a university to make sure that once those people come through the doors they can make the big adjustment that’s required.

A// Absolutely. For example, we’ve come towards the end of our Flying Start programme for this year’s cohort. Some of our students with disabilities come with their families, [who may] stay in accommodation with them to help them to settle in. They’re just amazed that they’re here this year in particular and they really, really valued that opportunity to come along early, to help themselves get used to the environment to develop that feeling of security and safety being here, but also being able to have their families and other support wrapped around them and that’s crucial. So it’s really important that we spend that time helping students to settle in and find their way.

Q// The other end of the pipeline for the university is then connecting people up with opportunities so they can make the most of the talent they’ve developed; and you’ve really focused on some of the growth sectors that perhaps were less obvious to some higher education institutions, but are the growth industries of the future.

A// We keep transforming our offer. We’re now talking about graduates for jobs that haven’t even been dreamt up. Our latest course , an eSports degree, made a flying start because eSports is a multimillion-pound business across the world. And there are so many opportunities out there. We launched our London campus last September because we needed to align our games students and our eSports students with the key employers in Europe and London is seen as the capital of [the industry]. While we’ve been there, we’ve been connecting up with industry and making sure representatives from industry are on that campus all of the time and our students are exposed to them and they’re getting placements with them. Another good example is comic arts. We have a degree in comic arts. I went to talk to those students recently before lockdown and I don’t think there was a student in there that wasn’t working on a commissioned piece of work. So we were already hooking them up with those opportunities. We also have Airbus placements for our computing students. We also have courses sponsored by Cisco, Google and Microsoft. So we’re just linking them up with the key players out there, making sure they get that exposure.