My background is quite unusual in the fact that I chose to learn on the job. I didn’t enjoy school and as a result, aspiring to go to university at the time was not a priority for me. Instead, I elected to do a secretarial course alongside A levels, which I thought would be a useful skill to have in whatever I decided to move on to. I don’t regret this decision as it has enabled me to forge a successful career in administration.
My first job role was as an assistant secretary in the Applied Science department at a further education (FE) college in Brighton. From there, every 2-3 years or so, I progressed up the business support system and was eventually appointed to a centre manager role for the Adult Education Centre. When the head of adult education retired, I was given the position as an acting up role. This was a huge promotion that enabled me to gain responsibility for the whole curriculum, both academically and administration-wise. I was subsequently appointed into this role permanently and started training as a teacher alongside, which aided me in ensuring the quality of teaching for our students.
Following a college re-organisation, I was asked to take up a newly formed role as Head of Admissions and Enrolment becoming responsible for bringing in smarter and more streamlined processes and procedures for the whole of the college’s curriculum alongside establishing a new Student Centre. A couple of years later I had the opportunity to move over to higher education (HE). We were an HE and FE college and offered foundation degree programmes run in partnership with the University of Brighton. We ran the whole student journey from UCAS admissions to student loans to enrolment to exam boards to graduation. This gave me a great grounding in the world of HE and introduced me to University of Brighton systems and staff.
I remember being picked on at school to answer the question ‘what do you want to do when you grow up?’ My answer was along the lines of wanting to find a rich man so I could live a life of leisure. That didn’t happen.
I don't think I necessarily aspired to be anything at that point, which is probably why I didn't choose to go to university because I just did not know what I wanted to do. This is also why I opted to do the secretarial course as I thought regardless of what I do, it would be useful to me. Becoming proficient in the art of shorthand has been especially useful.
What led me to BSMS was the college I worked for announced a merger with another local further education college. Whilst my role was not under threat, I decided that I had gained enough experience in the higher education sector and I felt I was at the point in my career where it was time to do something different. This was a major decision for me as I had been at the College for 31 years in different guises. However, I saw my BSMS role advertised and it was brand new at the time and looked really interesting. The job description was a real match for the skills and experience I had armed myself with and so I felt it was the perfect new role for me to really get my teeth into and make my own.
My current role is versatile and has adapted since I started. Primarily I look after the Watson School Office, which is the team running Clinical Practice and Community modules in Years 1 and 2 as well as supporting the Simulated Surgeries for Year 4 students. My team also provides administration for the Patient Educators Group. When I first started, I had some OSCE responsibility as well, but I've now moved away from the exam side. I'm also the secretariat for the Curriculum Management Board and for the Curriculum Development Group. I find this interesting and helpful in providing an overview of the whole undergraduate curriculum.
The modules that we run are logistically complex, and I enjoy the challenge. When I was looking after adult education, we had 500 courses over the whole year that I managed and more than 100 tutors and lots of venues across the whole of Brighton and Hove. This set me up and stood me in a good place to be able to cope with this.
My role involves working on a variety of projects and we always have several things on the go. I have recently opened the nominations for top teachers from our Year 5 cohort. My team continue to develop the use of Outlook for our modules to help students know where they should be from one minute to the next. I'm also part of a wider team that is developing an app for attendance to replace the old-fashioned paper logbooks.
The big project that I have coming up is the room requests for the next academic year. I will be working with other teams based at the Watson Building on the University of Brighton, Falmer campus to optimise opportunities to use the space that we have available to us more effectively and also starting the timetabling and room request processes for 2022/23.
As a manager, I've always enjoyed supporting my teams to progress, perhaps in a similar manner to the way I did, and equip them with skills and experience to do that. I did become a university mentor as soon as I started here. I've taken on many apprentices in my time as well as entry-level administrators. It's fantastic to see them progress up the ladder in the same way that I did. This gives me pleasure and I'm probably living my career now vicariously through them.
The University of Sussex mentoring scheme is there to give staff the opportunity to learn from someone that wants to share their skills and experience. It’s anonymous and I applied by putting down all of my relevant experience. As a mentee, you can go into a big database and have a look through all the mentors that have got their skills listed there. You can then sign up with one of them, depending on what you're wanting to do. I've had about five mentees and it has been a really good way to get to know the university as well as share my knowledge. I've met some fantastic people and it's been a pleasure to see them progress.
My biggest professional achievement is leading adult education to one of the highest curriculum area grades following an Ofsted Inspection. I developed a quality assurance process, which I introduced to measure the quality, but also the effectiveness and value of the lifelong learning that we were providing to our learners. I got a special mention for this as part of the Ofsted inspection. Therefore, for me, that's what I take away from my career.
The people that inspire me are those that have an invisible disability, myself being one of them, and just manage to make it through to the end of the day without a complaint. Nobody knows that they are struggling, they put on a brave face and get to the end of the day still achieving what they need to achieve. I know there are quite a few of us around, at BSMS in particular and it's nice to know that I'm part of a group. I think because others manage to do it, it inspires me to do it as well.
When I got promoted to head of adult education, I walked into the boardroom full of men and I found it very difficult to get my voice heard. Many of the things that I said were washed over and I had to repeat myself a lot. My strategy for overcoming this was to speak with some of them individually and share ideas directly with them in a way to get them to recognise me as someone who could make a valuable contribution.
The advice I would give my younger self if I could go back would be, to develop a thick skin as quickly as you can and start building resilience because you're going to need it. You will experience many knockbacks, but you have just got to keep going and you will get there in the end. This also goes to young women, be prepared to get frustrated with not being heard. It is challenging, but keep persevering. Your worth and contributions will be recognised at some point, but unfortunately, it's down to you to do the legwork.