Kia ora koutou
Wow – what a week!
I attended an Academic Board (AB) induction on Monday, where the VC shared her optimism for the year ahead, epitomised by 150th celebrations, by our ability to re-galvanise in-person and kanohi ki te kanohi again (after various Covid disruptions over the last 3 years), and by our positive enrolment numbers which are tracking above target.
My main observations from this are that we have a flatter governance and reporting structure, and more membership and ‘voice’ at AB (50-80 attendees, depending on agenda items), than I’ve seen in other Universities. The emphasis on casting a pan-University lens over our full suite of academic endeavours was also evident, and the focus on consistency of practice, and consistently good practice. Great to see!
I had the first of my regular fortnightly catch-ups with Ian earlier this week as well. We focussed on the finance and health & safety aspects of my induction, and I’m pleased to report (after some excellent time with both Finance and Library colleagues) that I’m feeling well-informed and ready for action, on both scores.
I also shared with Ian feedback from many of you about how nice it was to see and hear from him at my wonderful welcome morning tea last week. Ian said he’d be very happy to join us again at the next opportunity, to give a “state of the nation” update and answer questions. We’ll keep this a promise!
And Ian will arrange some time on an upcoming Senior Leadership Team (SLT) agenda for me to meet & greet the leadership team and share my initial impressions and focus for the coming year. I’ve shared a bit of the former in my column here last week, and will be sure to share the latter also, in future columns.
Other hui this week included:
- a couple with Elizabeth Hopkins (Director of Research and Innovation) for a meet & greet, and to look (along with Helen, Stuart and Kiera) at our reporting KPIs and what else we might be keen and able to track in terms of research funding, outputs and open access activity
- My first of the weekly catch-ups with Te Pātaka leads, which focussed on O-Week activities and an agreement on the importance of lots of visible staff (e.g. wearing large lanyards) to provide manaakitanga and ‘sense-making’ help to all our newcomers coming to campus
- An initial meeting with Dana Burnett (Director of Product and Delivery) and Nancy Godwin (Product Manager UC Online) to talk through all the exciting digital initiatives ahead for 2023 and start thinking about library input and support for UC Online
Outreach, connection, relationship-building and awareness-raising are all themes that have cropped up in many kōrero with various folks over the last two weeks, and I was delighted to see the culmination of these ideas in the launch of our UC Library Marketing Group Engagement Strategy 2023-2025 this week! This is really impressive mahi, with so many hands/minds/hearts clearly involved, and such explicit connection into the UC values of manaakitanga, whanaungatanga and tiakitanga. I look forward to seeing this strategy guide and enable our efforts in this important area.
Finally, I’ve been really delighted by the spontaneous “kia ora” chats I’ve enjoyed with many of you, and have received a few calendar bookings to have a longer chat together in the next week or so. Please do feel most welcome to flick me an invite, to get to know each other better as a first priority, rather than necessarily talk too much about work (but happy to do so, too!).
And I can’t pass up the opportunity now to comment on this weather. Glorious! I do hope you have something lovely lined up for the weekend ahead. Mā te wā!