Merger of Academic Services and Student Services Directorates a logical move

Monday, 27 September 2010

Carrington Building, home of Student Services

The Vice-Chancellor has announced the merger of Academic Services and the Student Services Directorate. The new directorate, Student and Academic Services, will be led by Richard Messer with Jennifer Ghandhi remaining Director of Student Services and also taking on the post of Director of Support and Enhancement of Learning and Teaching Services (SELTS), which is currently vacant.

The proposal for the merger was put forward by Richard Messer and Jennifer Ghandhi predominantly in order to bring together complementary areas which can lead on developing improvements in services. It was also felt that the original aim of creating a Student Services Directorate to increase the profile of services to students had been achieved and that greater synergy could be found in working in a larger directorate. The merger will also bring short term savings in that the vacant post of Director of SELTS will be occupied by Jennifer Ghandhi as well as potential long-term savings.

The new merged Directorate will operate from August 2011 with the rest of this year available to implement the merger. Both Richard and Jennifer are currently consulting with their teams on potential ideas about the best way to structure the new Directorate and potential ideas for achieving cost savings.