Bold steps: report from the February meeting of the Professional Managers’ Committee

The Committee met on Friday 8th February, the perfect time to review the work of the previous year and to consider plans to innovate on our activities going forwards.

The biggest story was the success that had been the Professional Managers’ Annual Conference 2018, held in December at Oxford Brookes Business School. It was an absolute delight to meet with so many colleagues from a large number of business schools across the UK, and as always the enthusiasm and engagement of the community really stole the show. We have taken many great ideas from the sessions and discussions to try in our own departments, and hope the lessons learnt will feed back into new ideas for next year. Colleagues with an interest in running their own session and sharing work at the Conference are always encouraged to apply; more information will be made available in due course, and in the meantime you can email Oliver Lowe.

Of course we are always seeking to innovate and improve, so the feedback we have received will help guide the future of the Conference.

We’re also taking some bold steps with the Professional Managers’ Professional Development Matrix. The matrix has already proved to be a valuable tool for colleagues in institutions of all shapes and sizes, and we are pleased that we are adding to its content, meaning it will soon provide guidance for professional development across new areas including in supporting learning and teaching activities and in work relating to accreditation. We’re now looking at ways of building on it with links to resources and other contextual information that is crucial to delivering professional services. This will take some time to bear fruit, but we are looking forward to sharing the results!

Lastly, we are pleased to report that our plans for a professional managers’ mentoring scheme are underway, with plans for a pilot well under development.

 

All questions, comments, suggestions on any aspect of the committee’s work gratefully received.

Dr Emm Johnstone, Chair, Professional Managers Committee