I remember being asked to do something similar this time last year – and finding it hard not to get tearful given how overwhelmed I was with the efforts everyone had made to keep the show on the road in what were unprecedented times.
So much so that I'm almost surprised I've been asked to do it again – as after another year of this it will be a small miracle if I get to the end of this without finding I again have something in my eye. Let's see...
What is clear through 2020/21 as we have had to work through these bewildering times, is that that we are a community that has operated through shared values in a bid to support our collective success across the year. And so my highlights for the year are actually the behaviours I've seen that represent those values in action:
Leadership
The Students Union this year has been incredible. Vice President Keira Davies had a taste of what was to come in her previous term of office, but this year, along with President Midhun Pavuluri, and an incredible team of School reps they have worked with both the University's senior team and all our student-facing services to lead the response to the challenges across the year, making sure we were working with the most up-to-date understanding of the circumstances students were facing.
Trust
What sticks out for me here is the work of my academic colleagues across all the Schools – who stepped up and followed advice and guidance that moved along with the science – and kept revising and enhancing their pedagogic and health and safety practices to ensure they could keep on supporting the learning of our students whatever the particular flavour of lockdown we found ourselves in across the year.
Accountability
Behind the scenes, while we were in the midst of responding to a tightening of public health requirements in January, a host of professional services (and academic colleagues) were involved in our external Quality Enhancement Review – adding engagement with this process to already long working days – and ensuring the quality of our provision was recognised – which it was – with an almost unheard of five commendations covering our undergraduate, research, international and administrative work. At the same time, professional services staff were adding still more hours to their days to ensure they could deliver on a number of additional WG funded projects to support student wellbeing during the pandemic. Extra work, delivered under scrutiny, and with imagination and verve in order to support students.
And finally, courage. It's been astounding to watch everyone, staff, students, partners, sector agencies rise to every new challenge – every three weeks it's felt -… but in particular I'm so impressed by our students. Colleagues constantly report the ways in which students have focused and used this year as an opportunity to develop skills, knowledge and networks in ways they hadn't anticipated – but that will serve them both in times of Covid and beyond.