At first, like most students, I applied for the Staff Student Shadowing Scheme because it gave me the opportunity to see the work life of a staff member. I am a PhD student and my project has been hunting down for very small molecules that we think regulate one of the post-transplant complications (graft-versus-host disease) of those patients transplanted with donor cells. So I am a wet lab scientist and my department shelters other wet lab scientists like myself who are PhD students, post-docs, principal investigators and professors. Therefore, it was very interesting to be able to get an insight into the work life of Martin Cox who is the Head of the Enterprise unit at the Faculty of Medical Sciences. His area of work was a breeze of fresh air especially since I am working towards wrapping up my experiments and writing my science based thesis that has lots of graphs and p-values! I have always been interested on the commercial aspects of science as I see it as an area that I will get deeply involved in at some point in my science career. Hence, it was an ideal shadowing scheme for me.

So now, let’s rewind to 2008, when I had my first encounter with Martin Cox when I worked at Newcastle Science City (NSC) in the role of a NSC Development Fellow as part of the Newcastle Work Experience project arranged by the Careers Service. Then I was a Master’s student and found it quite easy to communicate with him. As a student sometimes meeting with members of staff can be quite a daunting ‘experience’! Now if we fast forward to last year, I met again with Martin (along with a colleague) to acquire funding for attending the Cambridge-MIT Enterprise programme then again I found him very approachable. What was astounding was the fact that we had just booked him urgently for 15 minutes and at the end of it we had managed to explain the situation, receive his support for funding and also promise to write a report on our experience. I have been a student and school representative at the faculty and have attended numerous committee meetings so to me it was surprising how much could be achieved out of a 15 minute meeting considering the average meeting time at university is almost an hour long! Even my PhD meetings are not as successful as the 15 minute meeting we had with Martin. Honestly, this efficiency made me more curious to know how he balanced his work and managed his team.

So now forwarding to the two half-days of shadowing Martin in his office at the Enterprise unit. The first half-day comprised of him having individual meetings with his team members and getting through his long list of e-mails with his personal assistant. Something I had never seen before was how they formed a team of two and went through his inbox taking quick actions on the e-mails. To me it was a perfect way of tackling e-mails, something I had never seen before. It meant that people received replies much more quickly and urgent issues were dealt with. Moreover, none of the e-mails were ignored which was quite remarkable. Another, interesting observation was how he had his queries written for each of his team members on a post-it. So as the meetings went on he would go through them, cross them out and take down notes. None of the team members had to remind him on anything which I guess was the fact that he had gone through his notes pre-meeting. So again no time was wasted on going down the history path! My second half-day was again shadowing him at his Team Meeting and attending two individual meetings with his team members. The Team Meeting was quite informal and everyone shared their views and updates on issues. Another observation was how he had to make quick decisions and approve very important items before any action could be taken on. Shadowing Martin made me realize that his role is filled with responsibilities and also requires good communication and negotiation skills. There is lots of decision making involved that I had never known about before the scheme.

In summary, the Enterprise Unit is like a mini-industry where there is fast turn-around of outcomes, every case is dealt with quickly, reported and filed. There is a clear vision and the team work well together towards achieving the mission. Efficient and good communication between individuals and across the team was evident and surprising as it is not the same on the research side of the university. It was also clear that time and funds are invested on the team members’ career developments that in turn enhance their efficiency.

Personally, the shadowing scheme was quite rewarding as I had an insight into the Enterprise Unit and Martin’s work but also learnt many useful tips (queries on post-it, managing e-mails, team communication) that I plan to implement in the future. Thus, I would definitely recommend it to any student who is interested in knowing and learning tips from experienced members of staff in particular those outside their own area of research.

Sadaf Atarod.

It was a challenging journey worth traveling. It was also a precious experience for me to meet a local senior manager in a medium sized organization, being taught face to face about strategic skills, efficiency and organization ability. I spent 2 half days shadowing him. During these periods, Simon give me brief and complete introductions about his daily work: how to organize a meeting, deal with emails, arrange each issue; description about what the Students’ Union is and how it runs supported by charts and detailed financial reports, plus the newly printed brochures. He also guided the tour of the refurbished building for me.

Points impressing me most:

• Tier of plans and management strategy

Simon gave me a very clear illustration of internal hierarchies, and the tiers of plans based on that: The strategic plan, the operational plan and the departmental plan. All of them are in accordance with the Students’ Union mission and value statement, and each member/employees in these hierarchies know exactly their position and contributions to the whole organization, so that they are highly motivated, and the whole management is in a transparent way.

• The Student Union as a mixed organization

As a Chinese international student I am quite sensitive to the nature of the Students’ Union, whether it’s a private company or a Non-Governmental Organisation, or just an informal self-administrating organization. From this experience, I was surprised that it is actually a charity running independently, with a company like high efficiency and a Non-Governmental Organisation like devoting goal. As is emphasized, it is built up by the students and for the students, I assume it has really played an important role in Newcastle students’ daily life. Funded partly by the university and partly by self-owned business, it tries its best to keep balance among different stakeholders, and also utilize this mixed nature to avoid many shortcomings like bureaucracy and chaos. I would definitely bear this in mind and gather more evidence in the future about this type’s advantages.

• The recruitment/application procedure

I was grateful that Simon gave me detailed instructions about how they screen potential candidates and judge an applicant’s eligibility: using scoring sheets and arranging specific tasks. Now I’ve been aware of the process of recruitment from the eyes of the interviewers: It is more objective than I think. Moreover, Simon was very willing to give me suggestions based on his recruiting experience as a judge: Try to take control of the surroundings where you will have the interview–be familiar with them in advance; understand the job requirements thoroughly and deliver them back using own experiences; give details but remember to make them focused on the targeted skills……

•  The importance of external relationships

Simon categorized his own work into 3 fields: Governance, network relationships and operations. I was attracted by his emphasis on network relationships–the one I used to think that only Chinese people care and are good at. It’s about building up connections with the Newcastle, the franchises and stores that have partnerships with them, the National Union of Students (NUS) and other universities’ Students’ Union.  As Simon analyzed, the relationships are often of two sides: reciprocal and competitive. The key thing is to make them balanced.

 His shadowing me:

Simon spent a whole day with me in the INTO building, listening to me patiently about my modules, assignments, my responsibility as a Course Representative, as well as attending a class seminar with me, and especially, accompanying me through my co-chair role play in the staff student committee meeting which was coincidently arranged in that day. Two things needed to be made clear here: The first is that one teacher refused to permit his attendance–this was confirmed before the shadowing but since I did not expect that, I have to ask Simon back to his office to deal with his own works for a while. Though a little bit pitiful, I still managed to give more details to Simon about that course later that day, and I obeyed the rules of Staff Student Shadowing Scheme. Part of this lost time was made up by the earlier start of that afternoon (1.00 pm)–the usual schedule of INTO’s life. The second thing was that instead of taking usual seminar at 1.00 pm, he accompanied me to participate in the second staff student committee meeting held at the same time. This was not a tailored meeting, but rather my normal life as a Course Representative. It was also a good chance to let him know how the representative system from the Students’ Union was implemented in INTO.

Conclusions and further issues:

For me it was a very fruitful day shadowing him. Though a little bit information overloaded (because it was really hard for me digest all he introduced in a short time), I still tried to summarize and review the whole experience. Also, my classmates and teachers were happy about his attendance. I thought for me it was a journey of a deep understanding of the Students’ Union, Newcastle campus life, as well as the daily running of a medium size charity. I was grateful for the suggestions given by Simon, both towards this scheme and myself.

There are some further considerations I would like to share here: Though INTO Newcastle and Newcastle University Students’ Union are indeed two organizations, co-operation can happen and can really do good to both. In both of their goals, the students’ interests are emphasized as of highest priority, so I hope to see in the future, there may be more activities or programs launched in between and benefits the students most, just like how this Staff Student Shadowing Scheme has done.

XING LIANG

the current student in INTO Newcastle for Graduate Diploma in Business and Humanities

When I first found out that I had the opportunity to shadow Tim Kirk, Head of the School of History, Classics and Archaeology, I presumed that his time would probably be split equally between teaching and meetings with other lecturers. What I hadn’t realised was how many additional things would be thrown into the mix!

In late April, I shadowed Tim over two half days so that I could experience an ‘average’ day at the university for him. The Tuesday began with an hour in which we got to know each other a bit more, and he asked me why I had decided on taking part in the shadowing program, what I hoped to learn from it and also what sort of things he did as part of his job. This was really helpful for me, as it meant that he was later better able to explain why certain meetings were taking place with certain people, and what sort of things I could expect.

The first meeting which we went to was school strategy meeting with two members of the office staff. It was really interesting for me to see how the different departments of the school interacted in this meeting and the sort of things which came up, and I was amazed at the amount of topics which were discussed over a single hour! Topics discussed which particularly interested me were the results of Stage 2 students’ module selections, which I had done that morning, and the process of deciding how presentations for the position of the new lecturer in British history should be organised. I even had the opportunity to give my own opinion on the matter!  It was really interesting for me to see the amount of logistical work and preparation that goes into the task of opening up and dealing with the aftermath of module selection, particularly since as a student this aspect had never really crossed my mind before. It was also very informative to see how the popularity of module choices fluctuates from year to year, depending on the students in each year group, and how this can inform the process for next year.

I also had the opportunity on Tuesday evening to sit in on one of Tim’s teaching sessions, which he conducted with Felix Schulz, a lecturer in German history and native German speaker. Despite not speaking German, the lesson was particularly interesting, since it highlighted many of the issues of translating foreign language sources, such as the difficulties of deciding the extent to which you should directly translate the source, at the risk of making it less readable for an English speaker, or if you should make it more easy to read a translation at the risk of losing some of the original meaning of the source’s content. Having never dealt with foreign language translations in History before, this was something which I had never considered, but I think it will definitely come in useful when I am thinking about future dissertation topics and how much I will be able to trust English language translations. The group who were translating the sources was a mixture of MA and PhD students, and it was nice to see the way that the interaction between the group was informal, and yet still very structured, although there were certainly some moments of confusion when it came to translating compounded German words! Since the individuals in the group were all working at different levels of German comprehension, it was nice to see the way that Tim and Felix worked around this so that everyone had the opportunity to translate part of the sources.

Wednesday was another busy, but very interesting day for me, which began with a meeting of the Executive Board. This board included the heads of History, Classics and Archaeology, the Director of Postgraduate studies and undergraduate lecturer, and some other staff that I had met earlier in my shadowing experience. The meeting began with a small buffet lunch provided by the university (which I particularly enjoyed) and then we got down to business.  As with the day before, there were many different topics discussed at this meeting, some of which were similar to those from the School strategy meeting, such as module selection, this time for Stage 1 students. At the beginning, the minutes from the previous meeting were discussed and any corrections were made. The topic which I found particularly interesting was the discussion of the possible industrial action (which, due to a ballot held the day after this meeting, will no longer take place) and what the expected impact of that would be. As Tim explained, even though this was being discussed, the situation could have changed by the 1^st of May, which it seems to have done. There was also the discussion of a reading room which is currently under construction at the top of the Armstrong Building, and what kind of materials and books would be available for students. As a student who pretty much counts the library as their second home (as many History students do), and sometimes has difficulties accessing particular books due to high demand, it is nice to see that this is something which lecturers and school staff are addressing. Hopefully the Reading Room will be ready before I graduate, as it sounds like it will be a great addition to the Armstrong building!

The next meeting which we went to was the History subject meeting, with the different lecturers in the History department, and involved a short presentation on the non-academic impact of research. This was a fascinating topic for me to hear about, and has inspired me with a potential topic for one of the modules which I will be doing in semester 2 of my third year, which is about the way that History is relevant to the wider world. Again, in this meeting, module selections were discussed, as well as the findings from pre-selection polls and the changes that would be made as a result of these.  The day was rounded off with tea and cake, and the chance for me to speak to some of the new, prospective students who were visiting the university for an open day. It was lovely to see that they seemed so positive about it, and I think this really reflects on the hard work of all the staff, which I feel like I have a much better understanding of thanks to shadowing Tim.

I would like to thank Tim and everyone in the meetings and lessons which I attended for accommodating me, and the organisers of the Staff Student Shadowing Program for providing me with this opportunity. It has opened my eyes not only to what it takes to work in an academic profession, but also to the possibility of other careers within a university environment. This is something which I would never have been able to experience had it not been for this program, and I would recommend any student considering it to dive in!

Rachel Finn.

I shadowed a student studying Modern Languages with Linguistics and sat in on two linguistics seminars, a German grammar lecture, two Japanese sessions and an extra credit Spanish class.

The things that struck me were:

• How dedicated language students have to be. They have long contact hours by HaSS standards and lots to learn. I was struck in the classes I attended at how well prepared and committed the students were and amazed that some of them can study three languages at once.
• It was great to see an extra credit Spanish class as I was instrumental in getting these additional classes set up. The class was fast-paced and excellently taught and the students, mainly non-linguists, were well prepared and coped well, rising to the challenge. They were certainly getting good value from their class and learning a lot in just two hours a week.
• Students studying Japanese not only have to cope with three alphabets, two phonetic and one based on Chinese symbols, but have to cope with textbooks which are 100% in Japanese and which cost about £150 a semester. I had no idea this was the case. I was also staggered that the students could keep up, as I had little idea of what was going on.
• It was interesting to do the linguistics seminars and see how techniques of basic analysis can be applied to completely unknown languages, analysing how words are made up of elements. I was pleasantly surprised to be able to keep up more or less, but it was a first year class. Previously I had in all honesty had little idea of what learning linguistics entailed. Now I have seen a small sample of it and know I would have found it interesting had I decided 40+ years ago to follow a language route rather than to study history at university.
• I did A level German in 1973, so was pleased that I was able to engage with a session on German modal verbs. I only made two mistakes in the exercises, which isn’t bad 40 years on, but the current students seemed to be doing better.
• It was actually very difficult in practice to find times for shadowing, not solely because my diary is very busy, but because my shadow was also very busy both with her studies and with all her extracurricular commitments. It made me realise that some students are very well organised and cram a lot into their lives, as of course we would wish them to do. It would have helped me if the scheme had been set up earlier in the academic year so I had more chance to find more substantial slots in my diary.
• I felt that the whole exercise was very worthwhile. I learned things I would never have learned sitting in the HaSS Faculty Office and was reassured to find myself experiencing some really good language teaching.

Simon Pallett.

Shadowing Dan, a final year music student, provided me with an opportunity to attend a music seminar as well as find out about life in the music faculty, including a tour of the faculty’s music facilities. Dan attended one of our Senior Manager Meetings and we also had lunch in the Courtyard. We discovered, among other things, that we are both fans of League Two football, although with my team, Bristol Rovers, suffering the indignity of relegation to the Football Conference just weeks later it may be some time before we meet again at Bootham Crescent.

While I completed a part time masters after my psychology degree, my music seminar was my first undergraduate class in 25 years. Not knowing much about musical theory it was an interesting step into the unknown. Gone were the OHPs of my youth, replaced with on-line music clips which were used to bring to life musical scores that I suspect the students were playing along to in their heads. Writing this a few weeks after the seminar, and without taking notes, I’m afraid I can’t recall exactly what I learned about the music, but I did learn that seminars were much as I remembered them. One or two students seemed comfortable asking questions and responding to the tutor’s prompts for information and insights from the music he played, generally though most of the class seemed happier listening. Dan told me that because it was right at the end of term this seminar wouldn’t be examined, which is presumably why I wasn’t the only one not taking notes.

Following the seminar Dan and I went for a tour of the Armstrong Building and then the music studios to find out where the students spend time between classes and the facilities available to them. With the bland exterior of the studios giving little away in terms of what goes on inside, I am sure I’m not alone in being oblivious to the talent being nurtured on our campus. Having walked in and out of student rehearsals I made a pledge to make sure I go along to listen to some of the weekly concerts in King’s Hall, to listen to our students to perform, or even one of the visiting professionals who use this as a warm up venue for their evening performances in the city.

Walking into the music common room, meanwhile, felt like stepping onto the set of ‘Kids from Fame’, so much so that I expected one of the students to jump up at any moment and start playing the piano, setting in motion a mass dance and sing fest. Sadly with Bruno Martelli not around everyone seemed happier to eat their lunch instead, although the informal and friendly atmosphere of the common room made it a nice place to be.

What I did learn is that for music students this was their base, not the Students’ Union or the library. It wasn’t a glamorous or even a tidy room, more a school hall after a Saturday morning jumble sale, but very comfortable and a place where you couldn’t help but feel at home. Everyone seemed to know each other and there was a sense of unity among the students, whether classical students or folkies or whatever their preference. And, while Dan and I talked a lot about student life and the subtle differences between the students and who was who, as a career professional it was a timely reminder that engaging students in thinking about their career development means we have to go to them, and not wait for them to come to us. For many the comfort of their common room, and the dedication to their music, means we won’t see them otherwise.

Marc Lintern.

The staff-student shadowing scheme has successfully recruited for another year and include a wide range of university staff and students from different degree programs, including two staff members and two students at Newcastle University International Singapore (NUIS).  The participants have been matched and are in the process of undertaking their shadowing experiences.  Updates from both the staff and student participants will be shared on the blog and will provide an insight into staff roles and student experiences within the university, as well as some reflection on what has been learned as part of the process.

In the meantime, keep up to date with the Careers Service webpage as recruitment for 2014-15 staff student shadowing will be announced later in the spring.