Reorganisation of Academic Leadership to save ‘£750,000’.

With the restructuring of the eight schools into four faculties underway, Interim- Principal Professor Nigel Seaton has said in a staff-wide email that the restructuring is estimated to save around £750,000 annually.

The email continued, stating that:

“The rationale for the new structure includes combining fractional roles into full-time jobs, which allow for continuing contributions to research, teaching or clinical activities along with leadership duties.

“This results in efficiencies across the leadership team in both number and cost of such positions.”

Senior roles of the new faculties include:

• Vice Principal (already appointed)
• Deputy Vice Principal
• Associate Vice-Principal Global Engagement and Future Students
• Associate Vice-Principal Education and Student Experience
• Associate Vice-Principal Research & Innovation
• Head of Division’s

In addition to the faculty roles, there will also be roles which work across the whole university. These relate to three major portfolios:

Education and Student Experience

• Associate Vice-Principal Education and Student Experience

Global Engagement and Future Students

• Associate Vice-Principal Global Engagement and Future Students Africa/Home/UK

• Associate Vice-Principal Global Engagement and Future Students South Asia/ASEAN

Research and Innovation

• Doctoral Lead (0.5 FTE role)

• Associate Vice-Principal Innovation

• Associate Vice-Principal Research

The new AVP roles will replace or absorb eight previous academic lead roles, allign with the new portfolio based structure, streamline leadership so fewer people have broader responsibilites.

What Does this Mean?

The University is now advertising a range of AVP roles and soon Head of Division roles. For staff this may mean some previous responsibilities will be absorbed into new AVP roles.

Students will unlikely see any immediate changes in teaching, assesments, timetables, or programme leaders. Academic staff still run modules and supervise students as usual.

Research students (PhDs) may see the biggest change with the new Doctoral Lead (0.5 FTE) role, which could lead to more focused oversight on postgraduate research and improvements in support.