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The relationship between academic staff and their professional services colleagues is key to delivering on universities’ goals of high-quality student experience and knowledge creation. Today, there is increasing recognition that skills such as learning design are as crucial as subject knowledge when designing engaging courses, but tensions and challenges remain.
One issue is that professional services staff don’t always have clear pathways to promotion and progression, which can perpetuate perception of division.
So, this Campus Talks episode aims to answer questions such as: how deep is the divide between academic and professional services staff? Does the sector do enough to support career pathways for staff who don’t fit the neat progression of traditional academia? How can universities ensure that professional services expertise and experience is not overlooked?
We talk to Eleanor Hodgson, a senior educator developer and director of the ASPIRE Professional Recognition Pathway at the University of Exeter. With a PhD in French, Hodgson has held both academic and professional services roles, at Next Steps South West and Exeter’s Business School, before taking on her current position in 2021.
Hodgson explains how her team collaborates with academics to enhance teaching, and develop expertise such as AI literacy and inclusive pedagogy, and with other professional services teams across the university. She also lays out the challenges to promotion for professional services staff and why universities should draw in the depth of expertise across the university from the beginning of strategy, policy and programme development. She also offers careers advice for graduates looking for alternatives to the traditional academic pathway.
For more insight and advice on professional services roles and effective collaboration with these functions, head to our spotlight guide: Connecting the dots between academic and professional services staff.
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