Updates

For those of us working in the UK HE sector, a vote to remain in the EU on Thursday feels partly survival instinct, and partly a plea for a better world, as Mark Leach very eloquently expressed in his blog on Friday (wonkhe.com/blogs/universities-have-a-responsibility-to-drive-us-to-a-better-world). I will of course be voting to stay in, notwithstanding a hugely […]

The success of our new College structure will I believe depend on several important principles, all necessary conditions for making any matrix work; but especially important in the context of a business school, where so much depends on people making things work at the ‘nodes’ of the matrix. These notes are intended to explain some […]

Many thanks to those of you who managed to make the plenary meeting on Tuesday, and contributed to a good discussion afterwards. Many of you have already followed up with me with some excellent suggestions and comments. For those who didn’t manage to make it let me just emphasise the couple of key points I […]

Recently, a small experiment was designed to see if the attendance at adult education classes could be improved by using some principles of positive reinforcement. Programme leaders identified a couple of crucial points at which they realised that students were particularly vulnerable to not showing up for class. They then sent a short text message to them, […]

The tagline “Made in Lincoln” has been metaphorically following me around since I used it during the selection process for this role. It’s not that it has any particular meaning for me yet as a relative newbie both to the city and to the University, but it would be interesting to see if, together, we […]

The first week in a new job is always a kaleidoscope of new experiences; for a long time afterward you remember the variety of changing colours, even if the details fade eventually. What has made this week particularly memorable for me has been the warmth of the welcome I’ve received from everyone, with no exception. […]