IST EVENTS

IST and HEaTED Joint Conference - Review/Feedback

The highly successful IST/HEaTED conference held last month at the University of Manchester’s historic Whitworth Hall was attended by almost 300 Higher Education technical, specialist and managerial staff. Delegates were asked to vote electronically on a number of questions during the Questions and Answers sessions and in addition were asked to evaluate the conference as a whole. The results of both are now available.
Electronic voting feedback
Conference evaluation

The conference, entitled “Raising the Professional Profile of Technical and Specialist Staff”, began with an overview of the national situation from Bob Hardwick (IST president and HEaTED Consultant) , and then Matt Levi (U of Exeter and HEaTED Manager) gave further detail on HEaTED and Version 2 of the IST CPD award. He also outlined a Virtual Learning Environment (VLE) which is tailored to the CPD and is provided by goodpractice.net John Robinson (U of Manchester and IST Chairman) then outlined the role of the IST, explained the importance of CPD and the relationship between IST and HEaTED.

Professor John Perkins, Dean and Vice President of University of Manchester and Chair of the HEATED Steering Group closed the morning session with his speech ‘The vital role of technical/specialist staff in HE’. His speech was succinct, highlighting first the excellent reputation of UK universities worldwide (significantly, in the Shanghai Jiao Tong University league tables), followed by the contribution of UK universities to the economy, the vital contribution of technical staff and the need to recognise and build upon this to ensure continued success in the future.

The afternoon was used to present an overview of career development routes and CPD related issues. Jacqueline Goodall (U of Leeds) described her varied career progression in an excellent presentation entitled “Career Path or Crazy Paving” and inspired delegates to think more widely than the workplace in identifying their skills and abilities. Matt Levi and Sandra Walton (ECC Ltd) presented further details of the modern approach to CPD and demonstrated how it was tailed to individual roles and was highly relevant to the workplace. Ken Jakeman (U of Birmingham) provided a candid overview of the CPD award and how it had been successfully implemented and managed at Birmingham, from start-up to completion.

The Conference was kindly supported by the following exhibitors:
Valley Technical Services
Scientific Laboratory Supplies
goodpractice.net
UBMA
Jasco
IST acknowledges their generosity and contribution to this successful event.

NEWS update:

Professor Perkins has now written to all Vice Chancellors informing them of the HEaTED project and inviting them to subscribe. The message will also be relayed electronically to the director of human resources and head of staff development at each university.

John Robinson
IST Chariman