The changing face of CaSE

By Valerie Metcalfe, Director of Careers and Student Employment at the University of Westminster, London

Over the last few years, careers services have become accountable. Never before in the UK have we been scrutinized so extensively. We have quality assurance processes, compliance standards to meet, key performance targets and benchmarks to hit. Personally, I have welcomed these changes, although the associated increase in workload has proved challenging on several occasions. I believe, however, that these changes have helped us to not only align our objectives more closely to those of our institutions and those given by the wider government agenda such as employability, but also given us the impetus to clarify and celebrate our achievements.

Our ability to research, evaluate, reflect and record on our service provision to our stakeholders, e.g. students, graduates, academics, employer organisations, has only added to our credibility. We have been able to show and promote the full reach of our activities and their likely impact. This can only be a good thing - particularly if we are willing to consult and listen to our users - and take appropriate action to try and improve our offer.

At the University of Westminster, in which I have been Director for six years, I have overseen many changes. There are two that stand out. The first was getting the Vice Chancellor and senior management backing to my request in 2001 for a University-wide employability strategy and implementation strategy group, which I now chair and which has gone from strength to strength. The other was putting my own house in order so to speak, regarding diversity and staffing. Instead of just lobbying employers to be more proactive I made a commitment early on to increase the diversity of the CaSE staff profile. This has been achieved, always on-going, through the implementation of new recruitment and selection methods and valuing a wider range of skills and achievements. I think it has made it a more interesting place to work and made it an easier place for our students and other users to access.

To give you a brief flavour of other areas that have changed the face of CaSE I have given some examples below:

• Staff are our greatest resource: systems and processes have been established to enable staff to contribute to the department’s planning and implementation, e.g. across team approach to marketing, ICT.
• A business review was conducted involving consultation with senior management of the University, our users and, of course, our own staff. The outcome was the restructuring of the department with more clearly defined personal objectives.
• Increased involvement in learning and teaching at a strategic and operational level, e.g. CaSE member of University committee, careers consultant present regularly at L & T symposiums, career management skills taught in the curriculum by careers consultant, producing a Skills Guide for academics.
• Being pro-active in taking forward projects and research studies, e.g. running an Enterprise Club linking SMEs and voluntary organisations, exploring the potential of blended learning in Career Management Skills, identifying the career needs of part-time business students, and piloting and evaluating the web-based career needs of PhD students.
• Greenhouse sessions (inspired by Dr. Peter Hawkins and PROP): an inclusive process to allow staff a creative space to look at issues such as ‘Generation Y’, the future design of CaSE and career theories.

If you are interested in finding out more, do feel free to contact me: V.Metcalfe@wesminster.ac.uk

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