I have been a member of the AUA – the Association of University Administrators – for nearly 15 years and in this post I’ll summarise my experience of the AUA and report back on the regional conference held on 25th January 2019 at the University of Cumbria’s Lancaster campus.
North Wales and North West Regional Conference 2019
This was an excellent event, attended by around 90 delegates representing something like 16 different institutions. There was wide variation in the number of delegates per institution, which reflects how much the AUA is promoted and supported within those institutions (e.g. financial incentives via contributions to membership fees, or how active the advocates at institution level are). For example, Liverpool John Moores University, who achieved the AUA Mark of Excellence last year, was represented by an impressive 16 members of staff. At my own institution, Keele, there is a small but friendly network of members who are keen to engage with the AUA.
As is the case with many conferences there were keynote addresses and a choice of break-out sessions that reflected the different aims of the Association. I attended events linked to the AUA professional development offer, including ‘The Path to Accreditation’ and ‘Using AUA Publications to Communicate with colleagues’, which left me motivated to look into both possibilities (i.e. seeking Accredited Member or Fellowship status and writing something for an AUA publication – more on this below).
Other sessions covered leadership styles (a fairly typical CPD offer framed in a non-typical way), a Q&A with the engaging Vice-Chancellor of Cumbria, Professor Julie Mennell, and a very informative, and for me, topical session on subject-level TEF from staff at Edge Hill University.
Rush to publish
The greatest value to me of AUA membership is derived from its set of publications, which are sent to members or made available online. These include:
- Good Practice Guides – a set of guides, now numbering 46, which collate best practice in a specific area. The Good Practice Guide on Committee Servicing, written by Jean Grier, is particularly useful.
- Newslink – a glossy magazine with AUA news.
- Perspectives: Policy and Practice in Higher Education – a highly regarded quarterly journal comprising articles on (global) current affairs in higher education and a book reviews section.
At the regional conference Dr. David Law, Editor of Perspectives, delivered the session on writing for an AUA publication and noted the different requirements of each publication. He also signposted us to an article by Michelle Gander called ‘Managing Your Personal Brand’. The approach to writing for each publication can be summarised as follows:
Good Practice Guides are typically 4-5,000 words and benefit from a collaborative approach towards their production. They are engaging with a mix of practical advice, diagrams and images and are available only to AUA members.
Newslink requires engaging articles of around 400-500 words on a topical subject, often opinion pieces, reports of AUA events or member profiles.
Perspectives, meanwhile, normally contains more scholarly articles; however, it will have a new section, launching this year, called ‘What works?’, which seeks articles from AUA members based on practical experience from university administrative staff that are outcomes-focused and will help others to find solutions to particular areas of work.
Professional behaviours
The AUA bases most of its activities around a well-established CPD Framework, which sets-out 9 professional behaviours that may be used for personal reflection or adapted as the basis for an institutional approach to staff development. (follow the link to see what the professional behaviours are)
These are the cornerstone of the accreditation process, as applications for Accredited Member or Fellowship status have to demonstrate how your own professional development relates to at least three (for Accredited Member) or all nine (for Fellowship) of the professional behaviours.
AUA events
A jack of all trades is a master of none, but oftentimes better than a master of one
Aside from a CPD offer with many recurring events, such as ‘Introduction to Higher Education’ and ‘Managing Change’, the most high profile event run by the AUA is its annual conference held around easter-time.
I have to confess that I have never managed to attend the annual conference, in part because it is held over 2 (or until recently 3) days, but also because it competes for my attention with other events in the calendar.
As an association representing all HE administrators the AUA has to run events with a broad scope and they make a good attempt at this at the conference by putting on a very large number of sessions based entirely on submissions from its members. There are other networks with which I’m involved, such as QSN, the ARC Quality Network and QAA, that are more directly relevant to my area of work and it’s therefore inevitable that their events will be more appealing to me. That said, I do think the AUA offer is very good and has particular value for staff in the early stages of a career in higher education administration.
References and links
Gander, M. (2014) Managing Your Personal Brand. Perspectives: Policy and Practice in Higher Education. 18 (3) Available at:
https://www.tandfonline.com/toc/tpsp20/18/3/toc/tpsp20/18/3
Accreditation at the AUA: https://aua.ac.uk/professional-development/accreditation/
AUA publications: https://aua.ac.uk/resources/#publications
AUA membership: https://aua.ac.uk/aua-membership/#why-should-i-join-the-aua?
Exit Velocity 