HEaTED: Scottish Networking Event 2018 at Napier University – Marianne Keith
This year’s networking event was held at Napier University on 29th May at the Sighthill campus, organised by our coordinator, Val Gordon.
I believe it fair to say that there was an impressive number of attendees, travelling from many of Scotland’s top universities including: Edinburgh, Dundee, Stirling, Abertay, [Glasgow], Strathclyde, Glasgow School of Art, Heriot Watt, the die-hard contingency from St Andrews, and of course Napier itself. However, we also had representatives all the way from Queen’s University Belfast! All in all, amounting to 70 people and a full venue!
More so than ever I really felt that everyone was there to mix and to talk to new faces, literally from entering the room. I think everyone had already spoken with their table colleagues before the traditional HEaTED “Icebreaker Challenge” had even begun!
Suhel Miah (HEaTED Programme Manager) briefed us on the latest CPD/workshops to be added to the HEaTED repertoire, including several new courses provided by the MRC, Harwell Campus (Oxfordshire).
This was followed by presentations from various technical staff from Napier University about opportunities going on in their areas, led by technical manager, Kim Stuart, which I will summarise now.
Russel Wilson and Dr James Munro described their experiences undertaking the “ERASMUS exchange” where someone goes to another university to learn their way of doing a technique or process, and this is applicable to staff not just students! These two technicians from Napier had the chance to go to Germany and Budapest where they spent a few days seeing how their counterparts go about similar jobs. This initiative is paid for by the British Council although your institution has to pay up front initially. Furthermore, you are not obliged to receive someone back so there are no conditions attached to the scheme.
Lisa McMillan and Bill Surradge told us about their getting involved with EdTA (Edinburgh Teaching Award). Working towards this qualification has helped to improve levels of moral for many technical staff, and as a consequence of undertaking the EdTA, students are going to be asked formally for their opinions as to the impact of technical staff on their courses.
Finally we heard about widening participation and public engagement activities. Laura Hutchison informed us that it is a priority for the Scottish government to raise the aspirations of school pupils to study science, especially in under-represented (under-privileged) groups. The technical team have put together summer workshops in which they reinforce learning from the classroom, such as by extracting iron from breakfast cereal! The clinical skills and lab technicians are soon to hold a Zombie Virus workshop, and Napier technicians are heavily involved in open days.
Also, Chris Turgoose from the recently established National Technician Development Centre gave a brief outline of this new facility and how it aims to provide universities and HE Institutions in the UK with access to information, expertise and tools to create a sustainable future for their technical staff and services.
I was pleased to catch up with Henry Rae (St Andrews) (Outstanding STEM Technician, STEM Inspiration Awards 2017) who presented in the 2017 networking event at the Easter Bush campus. Henry told me an amazing story about his public engagement event which had taken him into a prison, and not a minor offences prison. I am sure Henry has developed some incredible communication skills there, since he made it out alive.
On a more serious note, one technician raised the point, what if you just want to be able to go to your work every day, work hard during your hours such that you can leave knowing that you have done a good job and to a high standard? What if you don’t want to do all these extra qualifications or CPD activities? My personal response is, that there is nothing wrong with this. If you are content with your work situation, then you should not feel persecuted because you do not want to give yourself extra work to do each evening, or weekend! You should not feel that people are thinking less of you for not making life more difficult for yourself! However, you should also never lose faith in your own capabilities and do not use being over 50 as an excuse to give up on yourself. And if your colleagues are pursuing additional CPD or extra-curricular activities, they will no doubt welcome your support and words of encouragement, to help them achieve their goals.
The day seemed to be over all too soon – another 9 months to wait to the next event!
At least we can all look forward to our bash on December 5th this year, details still to be announced, but get this day booked in your diaries now for a special kind of Networking Event at Edinburgh University!
Marianne Keith is currently a research technician based in The Roslin Institute and sits on The TSSG.
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