Author: Shaun Williams, Executive Director Engagement and Advancement
This week sees the return of the weekly UEB Blog, which we paused at the start of lockdown when we moved from our normal weekly meeting, to three meetings each week of ’Gold Command’ – the UEB-plus leadership team which leads the University during periods of business continuity crisis.
To ensure timely updates on fast-moving University and national decisions, we introduced daily all-staff emails for a period in place of the weekly UEB blog, along with regular update emails from the Vice-Chancellor. As we start slowly to move from crisis management to a ’new normal’, the need for daily update emails has lessened, so these updates are now being provided twice a week. The number of Gold Command meetings has also reduced from three to two each week.
From this week, the Monday meetings of UEB will be part Gold Command, part normal UEB business, so it feels the right moment to resume the weekly UEB Blog, even if initially there are relatively few agenda items.
In fact, much of today’s UEB meeting was taken up with a detailed discussion about a revised policy on degree classification developed in response to the COVID-19 pandemic, which has been met with dissatisfaction by some students and some members of staff.
Although this policy was introduced out of necessity and in good faith, UEB accepts that there has been some disagreement with the content of the policy, and some concerns about the process through which it was developed. Some students also feel the policy does not align fully with earlier communication from the University about ’no detriment’ averages.
The University has had to make an enormous number of difficult decisions over the last two months, often at great speed and to very tight deadlines, responding to events outside of our control and amid considerable uncertainty, often without the ability to consult as extensively with staff and students as we would normally like.
There are clearly lessons to be learned here about how we engage colleagues, particularly those on the frontline, in the decision-making processes in a context in which the ground is often shifting rapidly and uncertainty reigns. That context is likely to persist for some considerable time ahead.
The Vice-President (Education) is liaising closely with the Students’ Union (SUSU) and, along with Deans, will be meeting with other senior academic colleagues this week to clarify issues around the policy.
UEB also discussed the continuing wellbeing of our staff, recognising the isolation and additional pressures some colleagues are feeling through both working from home and wider lockdown restrictions, with the absence of direct social contact with colleagues. The University has a variety of wellbeing support available, details of which can be found here.
Other issues on the UEB agenda today included:
- Discussion of a paper on PGT Distance Learning Opportunities. It is clear we will need to prepare for both online and face-to-face learning scenarios during the next academic year, as the world works to bring the COVID-19 pandemic under control. A small task force has been identifying a number of programmes that are ready for development into Distance Learning as part of a pilot phase, alongside appropriate and proportionate quality assurance processes.
- A discussion about a request for the University to support an extension to the runway of Southampton Airport. The economic benefits to the region of the airport were acknowledged, and the loss of FlyBe is clearly a major blow, but there appeared insufficient evidence of how the airport proposes to address its sustainability challenges and move towards long-term carbon neutrality. All issues our University research could potentially help inform.
- Finally, there was a review of Health, Safety & Risk incidents during April – not surprisingly with many buildings closed and access restricted to essential users only, there were just two incidents; a review of the Risk Register, which has been updated to reflect the COVID-19-related challenges the University is facing; and a review of the decisions and actions of the University Genetic Modification and Biological Safety Committee (GMBSC).