Interview with Professor Steven West, Vice-Chancellor & President, UWE, Bristol
Leading from the front and remaining at the coal face throughout the COVID-19 crisis. One Vice-Chancellor’s account of their response to the pandemic.
Professor Steven West has been an exemplar of leadership throughout the COVID-19 crisis, remaining on campus and setting the pace for staff and students and although many tough decisions were made early on the University is reporting a small surplus. Professor West also chairs Step Change, a UK Higher Education Initiative to embed mental health and wellbeing in the core of institutional strategy. Under Professor West’s leadership, and led by UWE’s values of being ambitious, innovative and collaborative, UWE now has a unique opportunity to transform the Nightingale Hospital legacy into a platform for skills, employment and enterprise development, supporting the future for UWE students and graduates.
Given the current environment with COVID-19 what are some of the tough decisions you have had to make quickly as a VC to minimise the long-term impact on your organisation and ensure its viability and sustainability?
The first thing was to freeze all non-essential staff recruitment, so we could begin to control costs. We also released students from their accommodation contracts because morally, it was the right thing to do. This is a direct £6m hit for the University, and with additional investment into student hardship funds, technology and equipment for students and staff, we were looking at around £10m of added non budgeted financial pressure.
But we still managed an operating surplus of around £2m, and that gave us a little bit of hope, and meant we could concentrate on recruiting students.
What is the one thing that has pleasantly surprised you over the past few months about the adaptability of the University and/or your teams?
When we went into lockdown in March, we triggered our Gold–silver–bronze command structure, the kind used in the NHS or big business, with myself and the senior team being part of gold command, making the strategic decisions and communicating them to wider staff and student bodies. Luckily, a disciplined project methodology was already embedded in the University which helped when creating things like an audit trail. When you look back in a year or two it’s easy to forget you’re in a rapidly changing live environment with imperfect information and changes coming every hour. The audit trail helps show that maybe some decisions you had to make at the time weren’t perfect, but given the context and the information available, they were the best decisions.
You talked about the gold command structure and ensuring that you communicated your decisions across students and staff. If we were to ask teams in the University how they felt that worked, what do you think they would say?
I think they would say it worked well because it was inclusive of the right people but still very tight and focussed. We had two cascading information streams, one for staff and one for students, and we also gave regular updates on our website. We made every effort to triangulate all this content, while accepting and adapting to a situation that was moving faster than is usual for a university. I’m very pleased we managed to remain agile without disrupting the governance of the University.
There’s a lot of US research showing that after an economic downturn, giving and philanthropy across the sector is continuing to grow. COVID-19 is both an economic and a health crisis and as we emerge from this phase of the pandemic, and with still so much unknown, how are you planning to create a vision for philanthropy at UWE?
It’s a really interesting question. I’ve done tours looking at American Universities, from Ivy League to local colleges in rural America and the culture is very different. In the UK, once you get beyond the Russell Group, you see a lot less philanthropic charitable giving, especially in the Post-92 Universities. If I compare Bristol to UWE for a second, Bristol has around 60 staff working on alumni and philanthropic engagement. We have two. That means we tend to focus on the non-financial engagement with alumni to build up the following and the goodwill, in the hope that philanthropy follows.
Our approach has been to be completely embedded in the communities and region where we operate. We are everywhere and over everything. If you want to describe a Civic University, then UWE is a modern Civic University, often to the frustration of others. Rather than setting up campuses all over the world, we tend to work in partnership with colleges or universities across the globe. As well as being more effective in increasing our reach and reputation in different countries and territories, it’s giving us stronger foundations for if and when we do want to expand.
COVID-19 has challenged us to be agile. We now have (hopefully) a Nightingale legacy building which will become a global training environment for modern skills development in Health & Social Care and a test bed for the future. That is the kind of proposition, packed with social impact, that can excite a potential donor. It has history and the halo effect of the national Nightingale endeavour. We can be seen to have a strong collaboration and partnership between NHS, Social Care and the University, working collectively to create something great.
The Nightingale is sited next to Future Space, a health tech incubator of 80 companies all focused on assisted living, robotics and personalised medicines. This added element of supporting innovation and new business absolutely closes the circle for any potential investor or philanthropist. It’s the complete package.
The “Class of 2020” will forever be a unique year with many not experiencing graduation days, or able to say farewell to academics and classmates. In addition to this there is much uncertainty over employability. What work did your team undertake with the careers team and others to ensure that your most recent graduates felt supported as they prepare to leave UWE?
The first is to be very honest. It’s rubbish for young people. They have had a really rubbish deal and so we owe it to them to be there for whatever they need. We have been very clear that ‘you are part of the University forever. Our career service is there for you whenever you need it and we will reach out and use our alumni and networks to support and connect you.’
UWE has always done really well on the employability index, and we’ve worked hard to get our graduate employability in the top quartile. We’ve worked very hard to achieve this but COVID is going to set us back a lot, both in employability and the job opportunities for graduates. It’s our promise to students and graduates that we’ll be there as much as we can, and in particular supporting them with wellbeing and health and their future career prospects. These are areas that are sacrosanct, and in fact we have invested more in them, and we’re always trying to get those messages out there to stay connected.
We have heard for years that the future economic shape, broadly speaking, is SMEs. The UK lacks a deeply rooted enterprise culture, and I’m wondering if there is more that we could do in this area, thinking about the alumni community?
We have business incubators that we fund as a University for graduates starting their own businesses to get support for 6-12 months. If they are successful, they become part of the Future Space enterprise zone and park. We’re asking the question ‘what would the University look like if every student left the University having set up their own company?’ We’ve got a couple of relevant programmes, for example, Team Entrepreneur. It’s a business school programme where you set your business up and learn by doing. The participants have coaches and mentors, and there is a learning plan purely focussed on the priority elements of business; marketing, finance, law, HR etc. The students learn, they establish their companies and get practical experience. We’ve got 70 students a year as part of the programme, and what I love is it’s mostly those who wouldn’t consider a traditional university pathway.
Steven, nothing has tested resilience and mental wellbeing more than COVID-19 has in 2020. You have been integral in advising a new strategic framework ‘Step Change’ to create mentally healthy universities, and to help University leaders adopt a more comprehensive approach to mental health across the whole University population. What has been your ambition for Step Change and how has the project gone over the last three years?
The ambition is every University in the UK has a mental health and wellbeing strategy owned by the Vice-Chancellor and the Board and driven by the Senior Team. Good mental health and wellbeing is critical to be your best self, and you must take care of your mental health as much as your physical wellbeing.
Step Change is about looking at things through a mental health lens. From the curriculum and student assessment, to design of buildings and how you create career pathways. Where can we as decision makers support the next generation to achieve better mental health, wellbeing and resilience? The pandemic has exacerbated mental health challenges across the board but we can’t constantly look to the NHS to pick up the pieces when things go wrong. Prevention is much more effective than treatment and universities have a huge part to play in shaping a healthier future. Step Change wants every university to put as much care, energy and resource into mental health as they do research or quality of their learning provision for example. With support, we can empower a generation to deal with whatever is thrown their way.
Do you think the sector has matured to a stage where we understand that not all universities are the same, and that quality and excellence can be different across institutions?
Because we’re all measured in the same way by league tables, we get bent out of shape, and it’s very difficult for Vice-Chancellors to ignore. We all say we don’t take any notice of league tables, but of course we do. The markets take notice of them and Boards take notice of them and when you’re high up, there’s a warm glow. They shouldn’t matter as much as they do, but they do!
No business sets out to be second tier. What they do say is we’ve carved a niche and we’re best in that space. That’s something to be proud of and be honest about. That’s what we’ve tried to do. What causes inertia is those in government having a dogmatic view of what universities should be about. They would argue that they don’t invent the league tables, true enough, but government continue to reinforce the narrative that comes as a result of league tables. I’m happy to accept that there are things on league tables that matter, so quality for example and the National Student Survey, those things matter to our students and matter to universities that want to do a good job, so let’s invest in those and get that right.
We have observed that some Universities have fanfares when they go up 10 points in the league table from 90 – 80 but does the world care whether you are 90 or 80. It might care if you are 1 or 10?
No, I don’t think the world does care. There are some markets, for example in China, that if you’re not in the top 30, forget it, do something else. The problem is these league tables are often very volatile. You will have up and down movements that are significant and nobody will blow the trumpet if you crash 30 places.
When I became Vice-Chancellor I think we were around 75-80, and now we’re 21. If you look at the trajectory, it’s a line that just continues to improve year on year and that’s more important. It’s about being sustainable rather than playing a short term, zero sum game. I think that’s where we need to show maturity but that can be a hard conversation with Boards. The really important thing and what matters is that we drive the University values and strategy, and that we deliver for our students and society as a whole through our teaching, research and enterprise. Making sure we do the right things is what makes staff and students engage and commit to UWE Bristol.
Universities have received considerable criticism around the return of students to halls of residence and the subsequent jump in COVID-19 numbers. Hindsight is a wonderful thing, but what do you think the implications are now for universities, their students and the student experience in the months ahead?
Universities were identified as essential workplaces. We all need universities to be open because it’s the workforce and the professionals of the future. If you disrupt that education process, you disrupt a whole generation. My personal view was that the blended learning approach was absolutely right. The challenge of course is being able to deliver a high-quality educational experience that is safe when people have different attitudes to risk. Most universities in the UK haven’t wholly moved online and it won’t be a quality experience unless you were set up as ‘online only’ in the first place.
Universities are trying to balance science and advice with economic realities, and it’s worth remembering universities never completely closed. We had research and training continuing for the Nightingales, we still were supporting students out on placements. The world didn’t come to an end. We might be under attack from some sectors of the media but these institutions are vital to the future of the country and the world.
For lots of people, their university is a safe place for them to engage with their workmates and do the work that they love. We were dealing with students and staff who were being subjected to domestic violence and all sorts of really difficult stuff. We heard stories of some staff and students huddled together in one room balancing a laptop on their knee, on the side of their bed or using the ironing board as a desk. These are real stories. We are there and open and want to support. We should never shy away from that.
Steve, we are still in the midst of a pandemic and with an ever-changing landscape, what do Vice-Chancellors and their senior teams need to be mindful of in the coming year?
We have had to adapt our business model and our delivery model for students and we need to continuously identify and provide opportunities for the students of the future to gain the skills and experience they’ll need. It’s our role to provide the learning environment and connections to employment, but it will remain a challenge.
For me, managing this current situation is about leadership. When the crisis hit and we entered the first lockdown I remained on the University campus and I’m still there! Being present as a leader was extremely important to me, I wanted to practically demonstrate to students and staff that UWE was open for business.