Career background
Coming to work in higher education was a bit of an accident.
I was working as a primary school teacher, but I wanted to deliver innovation and meet the needs of the students who I was responsible for. I was pushing innovative ideas, but it was just not part of the core business of the school and they had so many pressures that I just felt there was a bit of a glass ceiling over my role.
I was looking for other roles to move into something different when I found that there was a role as a Researcher in widening participation. My degree and background is in geography and social and spatial inequalities, so I thought I can probably apply for the role based on my previous experience. I put in an application and I really didn’t expect to get the role, but I did, and from there I haven’t looked back. I love working in higher education and I find that there’s much more scope than there was in my previous role as a teacher.
As Head of Widening Participation, my role is primarily to lead a team to deliver outreach work to students who are under-represented in higher education. This involves developing good relationships with schools, charities and other stakeholders, ensuring that we deliver high quality events and programmes and providing strategic direction for the team. I came into the role in 2018/2019 and it involved me delivering a restructure for the team to better align our structure to the strategic priorities. My role encompasses work that crosses many facets of the University. I liaise quite closely with admissions, finance, the academic departments, a range of support services and careers and employability, so it’s a really varied role.
Widening participation means supporting students who are under-represented in higher education to access, succeed at and progress from university. Under-representation can take many forms. It can be personal or family circumstances, such as growing up under local authority care, having a disability or from being from a minority ethnic group. Widening participation also encompasses educational challenges, socio-economic circumstances and coming from areas where attending university is less common.
Opportunities within HE
I’ve worked at two universities now and I’ve enjoyed varying roles with a focus on widening participation, which have enabled me to become a specialist in this area and to develop a wider range of skills. This includes programme management, data, evaluation, communications and leadership and management, just to name a few. I’ve been really fortunate in all of my roles in higher education that the training and development opportunities have been made available to me.
In my first role as a Researcher, I was provided with an academic mentor and did lots of presentations at conferences, internally and externally. I was supported to work across institutions, not just within the university that I was working at.
In my previous role, I accessed a mentoring programme focused on taking the next step in your career and through this, I worked with my mentor on understanding the person specifications for the next role, mapping areas for my own development so that I could be a competitive applicant. I don’t imagine that you get that development opportunity very often.
The University of Nottingham has an incredible suite of online development opportunities. I feel like it’s really prevalent in higher education and development is seen as important for our staff. In my current role, we have been able to horizon scan and look at areas that we wanted to be particularly involved in. Recently, the National Network for the Education of Care Leavers developed a project around what best practice looks like for the education of care leavers. I was able to get the University of Nottingham to be one of the pilot institutions to support it. That’s been positive and something I’ve really valued, in terms of engaging with our students and a whole range of stakeholders, to map what our provision looks like and support this wider project for the whole sector.
Career highlight
Getting this role is probably my career highlight. I’ve been wanting to be Head of Widening Participation since I started working in higher education about six years ago, as I wanted to have a strategic leadership role in widening participation and make sure that the decisions being made were evidence-informed and put the students at the heart of the decisions.
I think another career highlight is working in fantastic teams. I’ve really loved supporting people, working with people who are positive and have a real sense of professionalism about them and I love helping develop staff to support them to achieve their goals. I enjoy seeing that level of staff development happening and that is a real career highlight, which I find is not very easy, but easier working in higher education than it would be working in other sectors. I really enjoy making changes that make a difference.
Advice for aspiring HE professionals
I’d say ‘try it’ would be my number one bit of advice. Also, speak to people about the roles available and have informal chats with them before you decide whether to apply for a role. I’ve always found that this has been received positively and when I’m looking for taking the next steps, I always go and speak to the contact and have an informal chat with them about the role.
People are generally very open and honest about what the role involves and what they’re looking for in terms of the person specification skills, so that gives you a good insight into whether their role is likely to be right for you. I think that would be my best advice and is the advice that I give all my staff.
This interview was conducted before the Coronavirus Pandemic. Working arrangements on university campuses may have changed due to social distancing measures.