As part of our Going Global Partnerships programme, we organised a live webinar on the topic of 'What does it mean to govern universities effectively?'
The webinar is a joint event of the British Council, Ministry of higher and secondary specialized education of the Republic of Uzbekistan, the 'El-yurt umidi' Foundation and Advance-HE. It brought together higher education professionals and academics from the UK and Uzbekistan so we could exchange knowledge and ideas.
Webinar outline
Building on our previous webinar exploring the conditions for good higher education governance, this webinar took a deeper dive into these aspects and how they support institutional autonomy. We focused on what good governance means in practice for institutions and those working within them in relation to governing effectively. We explored how university leaders need to be creative in ensuring they are able to differentiate their institution as well as develop strategies and structures that support both values and ambitions. We drew on the experiences of the UK sector’s journey to illustrate possible approaches and the importance of effective leadership in shaping the future which may be informative and applicable in the Uzbek context.
The session is led by:
Alison Johns, Chief Executive – Advance HE and formerly the Leadership Foundation for Higher Education. Previously, she led the leadership, governance and management policy team at England’s higher education government body.
Prior to that she was the chief executive of the Leadership Foundation. She has worked in higher education for 25 years. Before becoming chief executive, she was head of policy for leadership, governance and management at the HEFCE (now the Office for Students), where she established both the Leadership Foundation and the Equality Challenge Unit.
She is a past president of the Association of University Administrators (AUA) and represents the UK on the Association of Commonwealth Universities Human Resources Management Network and has recently joined the British Council’s planning committee for Going Global, the major international higher education conference.
Alison has extensive international experience of higher education including leading the review of teaching and learning for the Australian government. This led to the establishment of the Office for Learning and Teaching to enhance teaching quality across the Australian higher education sector. Alison regularly takes part in conferences and events, both nationally and internationally, speaking on all aspects of university leadership, governance and management.
Professor Shân Wareing - Deputy Vice Chancellor at the University of Northampton.
Shân joined the University of Northampton as Deputy Vice Chancellor in November 2019, and leads the academic side of the university.
She grew up in Swansea, attended a large comprehensive school and studied English Literature and Language at the University of Oxford, followed by a Masters in Linguistics and a PhD in Gender and Communication at the University of Strathclyde. She’s passionate about teaching and education, holds a National Teaching Fellowship, a postgraduate diploma in Higher Education Studies from the UCL Institute of Education and is a Principal Fellow of the Higher Education Academy.
She has been in university leadership for over 20 years and has developed Education Strategies in five universities. Her roles have involved designing and delivering academic staff development, leading digitally enabled whole institution organisational change, converting face to face programmes to online distance learning, restructuring IT and HR departments, and redesigning policies and practices in assessment, student complaints and timetabling. Shân is a regularly invited speaker for conferences and policy think tanks, particularly in the areas of digital transformation, gender and leadership, equality, diversity and inclusivity, and university strategy. She enjoys contributing to national debates via blogging; two of her blogs have won national awards.
The webinar is in English with the translation into Uzbek.