Senior Management Group changes
Published: 1 February 2019
Farewell Professor Jim Conroy - greetings Rachel Sandison
The Senior Management Group is the body that advises the Principal on matters of policy.
Joining from 1 January, 2019, as Vice Principal, External Relations, is Rachel Sandison. Rachel, who is also Executive Director of External Relations, replaces Professor Jim Conroy.
She outlines her priorities for the role here:
Full details of SMG membership and the remit for the group is available at our website:
https://www.gla.ac.uk/explore/facts/whoswho/#/seniormanagementgroup
Further articles on the role of SMG will be published over the coming weeks, along with details of events and opportunities for all colleagues to interact and engage with senior management.
Reflections from Professor Jim Conroy
A month after stepping down as Vice Principal (Internationalisation), it is a good moment to reflect on my time working on the Senior Management Group.
It should go without saying, but sometimes doesn’t, that it has been an enormous privilege to have served the University in this capacity and to be part of a leadership team working hard to provide a sustainable vision for our world-class institution.
Of course, recent staff surveys would suggest that engaging with colleagues in sustaining and nurturing this vision is not always easy – after all, we are a large, complex, angular institution where competing priorities (generally all worthy) vie for space and resource. That is as true for SMG as it is for the University as a whole. Despite these weaknesses, and despite the occasional disagreement about investment and asymmetries in resources and priorities, I have never been other than convinced that I was working with colleagues who were utterly committed to the view that the whole is greater than the sum of the parts.
It can sometimes appear that “University” is no more than a flaccid designator, conceptually holding together a loose coalition of disparate and diffuse interests. But this would be to underestimate the ways in which we collectively and corporately have worked to develop institutes, centres and resources that bring together colleagues from across our campus and beyond to interrogate complex cultural, social, biological and material challenges. And we have done so in a way that embraces our students. Indeed, of the Principal’s many important public positions, two stand out. The first, which made me particularly gratified was that our top priority is our students. We are not a Max Planck or Fraunhofer; we are a university in the great European tradition and are justly proud of that. Which segues neatly to his second: the determined stance on the importance of our European and international identity and implacable opposition to the Brexit of the dreary and the delusional.
When I took over the role from the redoubtable Professor Andrea Nolan, it was clear that she had laid the important foundations for an international identity commensurate with our history and traditions. I have been delighted to have been afforded the opportunity to build on those important initiatives.
Amongst those things that have given me particular pleasure has been the creation, together with my colleague at Warwick, Professor Jan Palmowski, of the Guild of European Research Intensive Universities, which has quickly established itself, alongside LERU, as the “go to” university network for advice and comment on European education, innovation and research policy.
And built into this have been increasingly robust collaborations with European universities. Other notable achievements in the European landscape have been the establishment of the European Centre for Advanced Studies with Leuphana, outside Hamburg, as well as the strategic partnership with Radboud. What has been particularly pleasing has been the way in which colleagues from across the University have embraced these and the other collaborative initiatives, whether TNE or partnerships with Sydney, McGill, Columbia and so on.
Internally, we have re-shaped our international reporting and development lines to increase effectiveness and reduce bureaucracy. Only one target set for 2020 has not yet been realised and I remain convinced that it is necessary to put renewed effort into it: that is, the development of a major global internship and I look forward to supporting colleagues in realising this important ambition. The evolution of a collective consciousness that we are indeed international in every sense has been down to the efforts of many, not least colleagues on SMG, who have increasingly been willing to invest in the re-structuring and development of our international efforts.
Undoubtedly my greatest and most important reflection on my time on SMG has been the opportunity to work with so many gracious and generous colleagues who have the University of Glasgow running through their veins. I have been, on a daily basis, impressed and uplifted by the simple kindness of colleagues working in security and janitorial services, media, IT administration… indeed, University Services of all descriptions. I have also had the opportunity to meet with academic colleagues from pretty much every discipline and have found them to be open, generous, committed and smart. I never fail to be impressed by the sheer wealth of talent that we have at the University of Glasgow. And on this, it would be remiss of me not to single out Heads of School, many of whom I have been honoured to work with – they are undoubtedly the backbone of the University, often pulled in competing directions but managing to translate policy into working strategies and relationships in imaginative and adept ways.
Having spent most of my career in some kind of leadership role, I look forward to being a good follower and will carry on for the next few years as Dean for Global Engagement (Europe). It has indeed been a privilege to serve the University, its students, colleagues and friends and I am grateful for having had the opportunity to do so.
First published: 1 February 2019
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