Introducing Catherine Thristan, Director of External Engagement for the Leeds University Business School. Halpin’s Principal Consultant, Catherine Wolfgang spoke to Catherine about her role, the challenges facing business schools, strategy for the next 3 years and more…
Catherine: Tell me a little about your role, your team, and the brief you’ve had from the Executive Dean?
I work across the business school and wider university, and my role is to build networks to enhance engagement opportunities for education and research activity. I lead the external engagement team, which has been aligned with the alumni team since January. We are a facilitating hub, collaborating with internal teams such as research impact and engagement, international, careers, student education, marketing and the Exec Deans’ office. When I joined, engagement activities were happening across the school, but they needed pulling together strategically.
Catherine W: Why was the decision taken to have Alumni Relations aligned to the External Engagement remit?
Alumni Relations was identified as a key area for development in the recent Business School strategy. It is such an important part of external engagement, and our work is more purposeful with the alignment of our teams. Alumni can advise us, advocate on our behalf and accelerate opportunities for research and business engagement, helping us achieve the positive impact that our school strategy is striving for. The diversity, experience and knowledge of our alumni enhances our external engagement activity and vice versa alumni have more opportunity to engage with and support the School and wider university.
We have changing audiences and a much more competitive market, so we have to be sure that what we offer has value to our students. Working more closely with alumni means we can maximise the opportunities that they can offer to students. Our alumni experience and insights contribute directly to the work of our academics and students’ learning. They also help us develop new partnerships, identify funding opportunities and deepen our understanding of markets and industries.
Catherine: What are the current challenges facing Business Schools and how are they impacting the priorities of the LUBS?
It is a challenging market and the reasons are well rehearsed. There is huge competition globally and from different types of providers in various modalities (hybrid, online etc).
Recruiting a high quality and international diverse cohort of students is a priority for the school and universities are heavily dependent on business schools in terms of income generation; we have a challenge recruiting international students in the current regulatory environment and Brexit has also impacted the attractiveness of UK Business Schools for EU students.
This all points to the importance of providing an excellent student experience and the need to diversify markets and income streams.
On top of that broader themes of technological advancement, sustainability and EDI are all areas that provide both opportunities and challenge.
It isn’t by accident that we have a strategic plan that addresses these challenges with work focussed around curriculum review and development, the student experience, professional learning, research impact, sustainability and EDI as well as how we engage more effectively with our alumni.
Catherine: Is there a challenge with asking academic colleagues to prioritise external engagement?
Academics work is focused around teaching and research and this is already a large workload so adding in external engagement isn’t always easy. A challenge in an external and internal-facing role is managing all stakeholders at an acceptable pace considering the differing priorities. It’s a delicate balance, making decisions more slowly than in a corporate environment, but not so slowly that it frustrates corporate external partners. I would argue for engagement becoming incorporated into roles rather than seen as an additional task.
Catherine: What are you aiming to achieve with your strategic approach?
Our vision is to be a world-leading team for nurturing meaningful and collaborative relationships with alumni and external partners that support our students, research and wider communities to make a positive global impact.
Catherine: What about curriculum development?
We work closely with our School’s education team and are currently looking at how we can support their surfacing skills strategy. The first phase is mapping and identifying gaps and deciding which interventions we want from external organisations, for example how employers can help us with embedding skills provision in the curriculum.
Catherine: Coming back to your role, how are you approaching your first year? And how’s that going?
I am about 7 months in, and presenting at the all-staff meeting was a milestone. In your first year, you don’t want to do anything too radical, but you still want to own your role and be moving forward. My role is very much about building relationships and working with the team to develop and drive forward our strategic plan. I am really enjoying it; we know what we are here to do. The next key milestone for me is our Faculty Executive Group away day focusing on external engagement, and I’m hoping we can green-light our proposed framework and build some more creativity around it.
I’m also looking forward to our open day in June when we showcase the work we do with businesses via joint research and innovation projects, access to talented students and graduates, Executive Education, mentoring, volunteering, consultancy and knowledge exchange.
Catherine: What do you plan to achieve over the next three years?
I would like us to become more well-known as a hub for engagement with local, national and international partners – small business, corporates, third -sector and government. It might take longer than three years, but this would mean that we had leveraged existing relationships, established new ones, increased our Executive Education activity, increased our research partnerships, increased the amount of industry engagement for our students, developed our alumni networks and developed a stronger digital and media presence.
Catherine: And looking back over the past few months, what have been your biggest learning points?
Transferring my knowledge and experience to a new geographical area, learning about a new university, and getting to know a new local network. In London you can meet people and then never see them again but in Leeds you bump into the same local leaders regularly which is refreshing. I’ve also learnt how wide-ranging engagement is and how hard it is to not say yes to everything.
Get in touch to find out more about how Halpin and our team of HE experts can support you.