Candidate Statements: Academic Staff Election | StaffNet

October 2020 Academic Staff Election to Court: Candidate Statements

The five candidates for election to the one position for an Academic Representative on Court are:

Dr. Timothy C. Baker

I am a Senior Lecturer in English, in the School of Language, Literature, Music, and Visual Culture, where I specialise in Scottish and contemporary literature. Since being appointed to the University in 2009 I have participated in a vast number of School, College, and University working groups and committees, largely centring on teaching and learning. I have served as School Director of Teaching and Learning and both Postgraduate Research and Taught Programmes; from 2015-20 I was chair of the University Task Force on Feedback and Assessment, which included sitting on the University Committee on Teaching and Learning. I have worked with staff from across the University on projects related to learning analytics, employability and transferable skills, student recruitment, estate improvements, HEA recognition, mental health, student satisfaction, and quality assurance, and was actively involved in the most recent ELIR process and the move to blended learning. These experiences have allowed me to work alongside staff from all academic disciplines, professional services, and student representatives, and to acquire an excellent sense of how the University works, and where there is potential for improvement. As a Court member I wish to foster this spirit of collaboration to create a better University.

Both as an academic and a member of Court, my priorities are as follows:

Environmental Responsibility and Sustainability. I strongly believe the University should be a sector leader both in academic approaches to environmental sustainability, across all disciplines, and in its own practice, including estates management and investments.
Inclusivity and Diversity. I strongly endorse the University’s commitment to being open to all, and believe we can do more to create a diverse staff and student community, including improved support for staff and student mental health and disability, and to support staff and students from a variety of marginalised and underrepresented backgrounds.
Interdisciplinarity and Employability. In both its curricular offerings and the additional training and development offered to students, the University can do more to forge connections between academic disciplines, and between academics and industry, to prepare our students for their future careers.
Local and International. I will work to help the University improve its connections throughout the North-East, as well as more globally, to ensure that we remain an international university, but are also rooted and involved in the life of Aberdeen and the surrounding area.
Transparency and Collaboration. Despite recent improvements, there are still pockets of suspicion between different parts of the University that limit productive dialogue. I believe that academic staff, professional services, students, management, and all other stakeholders are part of the same project, and we can only succeed if we work together in a transparent and efficient way.

The next three years will undoubtedly be a challenging period for the University. As an Academic Representative I will not only represent academics, but all members of the University community to build a viable, sustainable University that is responsive to and takes responsibility for the modern world.

Dr. Martin Mills

Professionally, I’m an anthropologist specialising on Tibet and the Himalaya, and also work for the Scottish Parliament as Secretary of the Cross-Party Group on Tibet. I've been at the University since 2000. Prior to that, I worked at Sussex University and studied and researched at St. Andrews and Edinburgh. I have been the academic community's elected representative on Court since October 2017 and have also served four terms as an elected member of Senate, representing both the School of Social Science and before that the School of Divinity, History and Philosophy.

In 2015, along with many others, I joined the Reclaim Movement in order to end the cycle of almost perpetual crisis, financial decline and low morale that the University seemed trapped within; but also to rehabilitate the idea and daily practice of the University as a united and self-governing community of scholarship and research.

This has involved a huge amount of practical work and hard negotiation. In 2015, I worked with other Reclaim senators to democratise the standing orders of Senate and rebuild the staff voice in academic decision-making. In 2016, supported by the two campus union presidents, I renegotiated the 2016 Collective Agreement that had stripped staff of their intellectual property rights. After my election to Court in October 2017, it involved a thorough examination of the University’s income opportunities – many of which had been curtailed over the previous decade - as part of a larger endeavour along with the Senior Governor and staff governors to reverse the existing policy direction of deep cuts, and move the University’s aspirations to ones of growth.

Through all of this, the one thing that I have learned and that guides my approach is this: progress towards building a successful, unified and above all happy university is neither a question of ideals nor of management technologies, but of law. Like all great universities around the world, the UoA is not a commercial or retail business or indeed an adjunct of government, but an autonomous public charity. Our charitable status is not a peripheral aspect of our activities: 83% of our income (including fees and research grants), along with our degree awarding powers, are legally based on it. Our primary charitable goal, declared and protected by charity law, is the creation and dissemination of knowledge to the public benefit. As a not-for-profit organisation, our purpose is not to generate profit, but to generate enough income to support that charitable purpose. Our students are beneficiaries of that charitable purpose, and the knowledge and skills they acquire here are also meant to be for the wider public good. They may pay fees, but they are not customers: rather they are involved with us in pursuit of the wider good that comes from knowledge. That is why we are here, and why we do what we do.

If that understanding makes sense to you, then I would ask for your vote. Should I be re-elected, I will continue to do my very utmost to realise it.

Ms. Anne-Michelle Slater

Our University, all universities and higher education everywhere has had to change fast. Never have universities been so spotlighted. Funding, how we teach, and our research priorities are all being scrutinised and indeed criticised. The University of Aberdeen has an important role to play as an ancient institution in a modern city. The Court, in overseeing the planning, decisions and governance of the University, has a long term and sustainable future mapped out in the Aberdeen 2040 Strategic Plan.

I put myself forward as a staff representative on the Court to voice the views of the academics, teachers and researchers at this challenging and pivotal time.

I consider I can contribute in two main ways.

First: upholding academic integrity.

We have all had to change the way we teach, assess and work due to the pandemic. It is essential that the immense efforts and creativity of staff in designing and delivering blended learning is recognised by the University’s governing body. Support for academics must be top down. In all the upheaval and change, academic integrity and values must be maintained and validated. I have extensive experience to bring to an academic representative role on the University Court: as well as teaching and researching law, I undertake interdisciplinary research, particularly with the Schools of Biological Science and Geoscience. I also teach for the Business School. I enjoy all aspects of teaching from first year legal system tutorials to the rigour of legal analysis discussion with PhD students, but 2020 has stretched us all. We must garner the positive benefits of blended learning, ensure our systems support this, but within this new learning environment, sustain academic freedom and integrity.

Second: scrutinising University governance and business development.

I bring experience of operational processes and strategic development as a previous Head of the School of Law (2012-17). Not only am I aware of the Court’s headline priorities and challenges, my current roles contribute to their implementation. As LLM Director, I am at the sharp end of the realities of international student recruitment. As Athena SWAN Lead, I scrutinise equality and diversity processes and practices for the School; as convenor of the Hay of Seaton Committee, I contribute to the wider cultural role of the University with commemorative public lectures. My responsibilities and experiences all contribute to a detailed understanding of the University of Aberdeen. This in turn enhances my ability, if elected, to ensure Court is accountable to all staff in its governance and development at this critical time.

Universities play a pivotal role in the educational, social and economic life of an area. Aberdeen City itself is at a time of change. There is much ahead for this ancient university in this changing city. I would relish the opportunity of contributing as Academic Court Representative over the next 3 years.

Mr. Scott C. Styles

I am standing for the post of elected academic staff member on the University because I believe I can do a good job in speaking up for the interests of staff members in the body which actually owns all the university’s property and is our employer.

Biography

I am from an Aberdeen working class family and was the first person in my family to go to university so I am very committed to widening participation at university from all disadvantaged groups. I have a First Class Honours MA in Philosophy and International Relations from Aberdeen and I also hold a law degree from the University of Edinburgh. I lectured at Edinburgh and Dundee Universities before returning to Aberdeen in 1993. I am now a senior lecturer in the School of Law. In recent years I have a taught mainly contract and Medical law but I remain interested in a wide variety of subjects and firmly believe in the importance of teaching as well as research.

Views on the University

I believe the university is a community of scholars and students which exists to promote scholarship and to benefit the wider community both local and global. I love teaching students, enjoy research and am a proud member of the 500 year old Republic of Scholars which is Aberdeen University.

Relevant Experience

Over the years I have been an active member of UCU. Several years ago I was the local branch president, and I remain on the local committee as an ordinary member and I’m active behind the scenes doing personal case work for colleagues who find themselves in difficult situations or who have a grievance. I am also an active member of the University Senate and am currently a member of the Senate Business Committee. I therefore have experience of working with management but I have never been a manager myself.

Role of Court

I believe it is important that an ordinary staff member takes on the extraordinary responsibility of representing the over 1,000 academic members of staff who work at Aberdeen University on Court. I would hope to promote the interests of staff working alongside our Senior Governor Esther Roberton, the Rector, Maggie Chapman, the two trade union representatives, the 4 senate assessors and of course the elected representative of non academic staff. The remaining court members are the 12 independent members who are co-opted onto court. I would do my best to build relationships with the independent members.

Policies

If elected I will strive to represent the views of colleagues during what with the combined impact of Covid and Brexit will be very challenging times for the University. I will endeavour to keep in touch with all staff. I will always oppose compulsory staff redundancies if such were ever to be proposed, which I sincerely hope will never happen. I would also support measures to improve transparency and communication within the university, to promote equality and diversity among staff and students and to protect the environment.

Professor Ursula Witte

Why I am qualified to work on Court

I joined the University of Aberdeen in 2005 as 6th Century Chair in Biological Oceanography, following 6 years as Head of the Lander Group at the Max-Planck-Institute for Marine Microbiology and PhD and Postdoc positions at the Universities of Hamburg and Kiel. During the last 25 years, I have led many national and international research projects and programmes and gained significant experience in effective committee work on review and selection panels and committees, or the steering groups and advisory boards of national and international bodies and organisations such as MASTS or DOSI. For the last 15 years, I have taught at UG and PG levels, developed new teaching modules and supervised Honours, Masters and PhD students. Thus, I believe I am well-qualified to represent the academic constituency at Court.

Current challenges

COVID-19 and Brexit present great immediate challenges to both British Higher Education institutions and individual academics, who find their research opportunities curtailed and their teaching and administrative workloads increased. We are likely to find turbulent times ahead, and with a child still in secondary school I am aware of the additional, sometimes unequally distributed demands that the pandemic has placed and will continue to place on our time and energy budgets. Simultaneously, HE institutions need to lead by example on necessary societal change, be it the incorporation of Black History into the curriculum or the adaptation to and mitigation of climate change.

Academic freedom and a work environment conducive to the pursuit of it, together with excellent teaching that fosters intellectually rigorous thinking in future generations, are at the heart of academic institutions and are what allows them to be the innovation hubs society needs. It is thus critical to the long-term success of an academic institution to protect these assets.

How I will represent academic staff on Court

The University is a complex organisation operating within a very complex external environment and I will ensure to attend meetings fully prepared, listen carefully and speak out clearly and constructively to make sure that the academic perspective is taken into account in decisions that can have a major impact on the future directions and success of the institutions and its staff. In order to effectively represent the University of Aberdeen’s academic community at Court, I plan to canvass opinions through regular consultations and surgeries prior to Court meetings. Provided there is enough interest, a more permanent ‘advisory group’ that includes members from various academic roles and disciplines could be established.

Why vote for me?

I am an academic with significant experience in research, teaching and committee work who passionately believes that Universities are a force for good because they provide space and security to think deeply and independently, which must not be eroded. I am being nominated by two members of academic staff who have been on Court recently, one from Foresterhill and one from Old Aberdeen, and who both believe that I will be an effective representative on Court.