BU Research Blog

Some quick feed back from attending Wednesday’s new staff development session on Funding your Studentship: engaging effectively with business and industry.   I fell into this session somewhat by accident having moaned in my Associate Prof Action Learning Group the day before about how difficult I was finding working with industry/practice partners (both in getting them to invest but also after investment in the post award working relationship).  I promised Colleen I would pop in for half an hour in the morning and stayed the whole day (so much for the deadlines I face to day!).

I have recently completed a KTP with a local charity and am beginning a matched studentship with another, and was a little down that I could see the same miserable cycle of different timeframes and priorities, the perceived irrelevance of the university and their contributions were rearing their ugly heads yet again.  Similarly, I have been working on building ideas around the development of a centre of collaborative practice based on HSC’s practice development units, and was feeling at a loss as how I could engage and convince practice this was exactly what they needed, even if they don’t know it yet.  Needless to say, sitting in front of a computer practicing the evil art of telepathy has had mixed results.

Following yesterday’s session, I am now full of beans again.  I hadn’t realised the wealth of expertise we had in BU in the form of Linda Amor, Orlanda Harvey, Lucy Rossiter, Ian Jones and Paul Lynch and it was well show cased in yesterday’s session.  The content hit the spot completely with my problems mentioned above.  The session isn’t only about studentships, although listening to different models of making studentships work and breaching the potential gap that lies between what the company and BU perceive the studentship to be, delivering quick wins for the company whilst maintaining academic rigour, were enormously useful.  It is also about crossing those academic/industry boundaries, learning to speak the language of our industrial partners, managing their expectations, listening to their needs and being able to clearly and concisely articulate your added value in addressing their needs.

These are skills rather than knowledge, so I will need to practice. I have a long way to go and am unlikely to get it right every time However, I feel energized enough now to go back into the fray. In fact, I’m now off to pick up the phone (no, not an email) and get on a train to London to talk to my matched studentship partner CEO, to listen to what he really wants from our studentship and see how I can help.

Next sessions run in September for other ivory tower academics looking for a ladder to get you out (of) there.