Tag: Connect

  • How we designed a space where our students connect, collaborate, and flourish

    How we designed a space where our students connect, collaborate, and flourish

    Key points:

    Our charter school, Westbrook Academy, has been serving middle and high school students in the South Los Angeles area for the past six years and stands as a beacon of opportunity for our community. With a student body comprising nearly 99 percent Black and Latinx individuals hailing from historically under-resourced communities, we confront the realities of poverty and the accompanying insecurities head-on.

    Despite the odds, our 400 students consistently demonstrate remarkable resilience and a profound capacity for excellence. Our institution is supported by generous donors and funding sources. Operated and managed by the education nonprofit LA Promise Fund, which provides students with academic and enrichment opportunities that support our mission to spark passion, empower leadership, and prepare them for their chosen college and career paths.

    At one point, our high school students were learning in a church because we didn’t have a traditional classroom set-up. We also lacked the equipment that a traditional high school might have. This changed when we moved into our forever home in South Gate, where an on-campus Empowerment Center serves as a modern, welcoming “student hub.”

    Designed and outfitted by MiEN and Meteor Education, the Empowerment Center is where kids go to hang out, collaborate, and/or participate in school club activities. The hub is also set up with two wellness rooms where students can go to debrief and disconnect from a long day or just the stresses of being a student. It’s there for the students’ use.

    Here are the steps we took to create a space that consistently makes jaws drop and impresses parents who never thought their children would have access to such a warm, welcoming communal space on campus:

    • Add some flexibility into the process. Our original goal was to open the Empowerment Center’s doors in time for the 2023-24 school year, but getting it done the right way would require a bit more time. Our partners were willing to listen to us in terms of what we wanted to create, but within the realistic timelines. That was really cool.
    • Acknowledge the financial limitations. We largely relied on fundraising for this project and knew that some things just weren’t going to be realistic. To other schools in similar situations, I’d recommend staying flexible enough to hit the timelines and get all of the bases covered while keeping student needs in mind. We can have all the bells and whistles, but at the end of the day, if the car runs, the car runs. We know we can always add a new paint job later.
    • Get the right partners onboard early. As we went through the steps of designing the Empowerment Center, we learned a lot about architecture, planning, and construction. Through it all, having the right partners in its corner helped the school achieve its goals within budget and on time. It was really great to have our design and furniture partners sharing their best practices and other insights with us. We knew what we wanted to do, and a lot of the ideas came from our families and students. We just needed them to show us how we could get those ideas as close to reality as possible.
    • Make it personal. Special features we wanted in our Empowerment Center included a huge, interactive flatscreen TV that students, teachers, and guest speakers use to interact and work together. There’s also a large selection of donated books, the latest technology tools, and artwork that was personally selected by an art curation team. They were able to secure artists from the LA community to create and share visuals that our students are really familiar with. For example, some of the artwork spotlights female empowerment (i.e., with photos of authors like Octavia Butler) and the importance of acknowledging indigenous people. Everything in the hub is meant to spark curiosity. 
    • Brace yourself for some jaw-dropping moments. At our ribbon-cutting ceremony last year, our parents’ jaws were on the floor. They just never thought these resources would be available to their kids. A lot of them grew with us being in the church and a co-located space, and then we asked them to trust us to deliver on our promise, and now we’re able to show that as the reward for supporting us. We feel really proud that our parents were just over the moon about it.

    Hitting it out of the park

    Reflecting on the process we put in place to get our modern student hub designed, built, and open for business, I can say that the end result is an engaging, collaborative space that can be used for hanging out, structured learning, or a little of both. I think we really hit the ball out of the park with this innovative space.

    Student, teacher, and family feedback on the Empowerment Center has been extremely positive. Everyone loves it, and students are always excited to come and spend time in the modern, comfortable space that’s equipped with the technology and tools they need to be able to learn and engage.

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  • Only connect: why investing in relational infrastructure is critical for universities

    Only connect: why investing in relational infrastructure is critical for universities

    Today on the HEPI blog, we explore the discussions at a recent HEPI roundtable with Elsevier on the topic of the Fourth Generation University – which combines teaching, research and knowledge exchange.

    You can read a full write-up of the roundtable, by HEPI’s own Director of Partnerships, Lucy Haire, at this link – or read on for a discussion of relational infrastructure by Sarah Chaytor.

    • Sarah Chaytor is Director of Strategy & Policy and Joint Chief of Staff to the UCL Vice-Provost, Research, Innovation & Global Engagement.

    At a recent HEPI roundtable dinner with Elsevier to discuss how universities could strengthen their regional and civic contributions, there was a rather sobering discussion of the ‘low stock’ of universities amongst both government and the public.

    This was in the context of an ongoing, international discussion about the concept of ‘fourth generation’ universities. These are defined as ‘global universities that are fully integrated in their local innovation ecosystem with the aim of tackling worldwide societal challenges and driving regional economic growth.’

    We are well-versed in our sector on the economic benefits of universities and well-practiced in trumpeting these to ourselves and to government. Yet at the same time, there is a growing evidence base on the disconnect between the British public and universities. Reports from UPP/HEPI and from Public First suggest a significant lack of awareness amongst many citizens of how universities positively affect their daily lives or contribute to the places they live. As someone working in university research, I am particularly concerned by public attitudes to research and development (R&D) – important work done by CaSE on public perceptions of R&D has found that a significant majority of people think that that ‘R&D doesn’t benefit people like them’ or feel neutral or unsure about R&D’s impacts.

    I’m not sure that, as a sector, we have fully grasped how serious this is. It cannot be a state of affairs that we simply shrug our shoulders at. As CaSE has observed: ‘This is a precarious position for a sector that receives substantial public investment.’  We risk undermining the ‘social compact’ that exists between universities and the public – that is, the basis on which we receive public funding (especially for R&D) is our ability to make a broader contribution.

    I conclude from this that the focus over the past 20 years or so on universities’ economic contribution doesn’t cut through to those citizens who feel that the economy simply doesn’t work for them. Making universities part of an abstract and disconnected concept of economic growth is of no interest to people worried about access to housing, cost of living or the state of their local high street. It also overlooks the multifaceted ways in which universities are contributing to places across the UK, from providing jobs to sports facilities to cultural institutions to working with community groups to undertaking the research that can save lives or tackle pressing challenges. 

    I think we need to focus more on how universities can make human connections and articulate their research benefit in human terms. To draw from Peter Kyle’s framing of innovation, we need to show how universities are putting their considerable assets and resources to use for the public good. From a research perspective, this requires us to think about the purpose of knowledge and how we connect knowledge to communities across the country.  In particular, we need to work much better to build trusted relationships that enable us to understand the needs of communities and citizens around the country and ensure that we are demonstrably meeting these.

    For me, that starts with taking much more seriously the need to invest in the ‘relational infrastructure’ that can support those connections. Put simply, relational infrastructure is the people, structures and processes that support universities to connect with other parts of society. At its core are people – people who build and maintain relationships, who manage processes and structures for engagement, who keep connections going between specific projects and funding periods.

    In my own world of academic-policy engagement, this relational infrastructure is the crucial ‘glue’ which underpins a whole host of interactions, projects, and exchange of ideas. It supports ways of working with policymakers that are about long-term partnership and collaboration rather than one-off transactions. (More on this in the final report from the Capabilities in Academic Policy Engagement project.)

    We know that universities can tell a powerful story about their civic contribution – as the Civic University Commission noted, universities are ‘hugely important to the economic, social, cultural and environmental wellbeing of the places in which they are located’. This concept is echoed in the idea of the ‘fourth generation’ university. But perhaps we have focused too much on shiny projects and initiatives, and not enough on the simple relational approaches which underpin successful and long-term engagement and meaningful partnerships.

    Relational infrastructure is all too easy to overlook or to take for granted. It rarely appears in business cases or exciting new project proposals. But it is one of our most precious assets and should be actively cultivated. This requires institutions to acknowledge the need for long-term investment and to recognise that, whilst it will deliver dividends for universities, these will not necessarily arise a short time-frame or via our ‘usual’ metrics. What relational infrastructure will deliver is deep and meaningful connections with other parts of society, which enable universities to put their research (and other) assets to public good use.

    It’s time to take our responsibility to develop and maintain relational infrastructure seriously – it is the route to rebuilding our relationship with wider society.

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  • Connect more: creating the conditions for a more resilient and sustainable HE sector in England

    Connect more: creating the conditions for a more resilient and sustainable HE sector in England

    Despite it being the season of cheer, higher education in England isn’t facing the merriest of Christmases.

    Notwithstanding the recent inflationary uplift to the undergraduate fee cap, the financial headwinds in higher education remain extremely challenging. Somehow, in the spring/summer of next year, the Secretary of State for Education is going to have to set out not only what the government expects from the sector in terms of meeting the core priority areas of access, quality and contribution to economic growth, but how it will deliver on its promise to put the sector on a long-term sustainable financial footing.

    The overall structure of the sector in terms of the total number of providers of higher education and their relationships to each other might arguably be considered a second-order question, subject to the specifics of the government’s plans. But thinking that way would be a mistake.

    The cusp of change

    There are real and present concerns right now about the short term financial stability of a number of providers, with the continued increased risk that a provider exits the market in an unplanned way through liquidation, making the continued absence of a regime for administering distressed providers ever more stark.

    But on a larger scale, if, as some believe, the sector is on the cusp of entering into a new phase of higher education, a much more connected and networked system, tied more closely into regional development agendas, and more oriented to the collective public value that higher education creates, then the thinking needs to start now about how to enable providers to take part in the strategic discussions and scenario plans that can help them to imagine that kind of future, and develop the skills to operate in the new ways that a different HE landscape could require. It is these discussions that need to inform the development of the HE strategy.

    The Office for Students (OfS) has signalled that it considers more structural collaboration to be likely as a response to financial challenge:

    Where necessary, providers will need to prepare for, and deliver in practice, the transformation needed to address the challenges they face. In some cases, this is likely to include looking externally for solutions to secure their financial future, including working with other organisations to reduce costs or identifying potential merger partners or other structural changes.

    Financial challenge may be the backdrop to some of this thinking; it should not be the sole rationale. Looking ahead, the sector would be planning change even if it were in good financial health: preparing for demographic shifts and the challenge of lifelong learning, the rise of AI, and the volatile context for international education and research. Strategic collaboration is rarely an end in itself – it’s nice to work together but ultimately there has to be a clear strategic rationale that two or more providers can realise greater value and hedge more readily against future risks, than each working individually.

    There’s no roadmap

    In the autumn of 2024, Wonkhe and Mills & Reeve convened a number of private and confidential conversations with heads of institution, stakeholders from the sector’s representative bodies, mission groups, and regional networks, Board chairs, and a lender to the sector. We wanted to test the sector’s appetite for structural change; in the first instance assessing providers’ appetite for stepping in to support another provider struggling, but also attitudes to merger and other forms of strategic collaboration short of full merger. Our report, Connect more: creating the conditions for a more resilient and sustainable higher education system in England sets out our full findings and recommendations.

    There is a startling dearth of law and policy around structural collaboration for HE; some issues such as the VAT rules on shared services, are well established, while others are more speculative. What would the regulatory approach be to a “federated” group of HE providers? What are merging providers’ legal responsibilities to students? What data and evidence might providers draw on to inform their planning?

    We found a very similar set of concerns, whether we were discussing a scenario in which a provider is approached by DfE or OfS to acquire another distressed provider, or the wider strategic possibilities afforded by structural collaboration.

    All felt strongly that the driving rationale behind any such structural change – which takes considerable time and effort to achieve – should be strategic, rather than purely financial. Heads of institution could readily imagine the possibilities for widening access to HE, protecting at-risk subjects; boosting research opportunities, and generally realising value through the pooling of expertise, infrastructure and procurement power. The regional devolution and regional economic growth agendas were widely considered to be valued enablers for realising the opportunities for a more networked approach.

    But the hurdles to overcome are also significant. Interviewees gave examples of failed collaboration attempts in other sectors and the negative cultural perceptions attached to measures like mergers. There was a nervousness about competition law and more specifically OfS’ attitude to structural change, the implications for key institutional performance metrics, and a general sense that no quarter would be given in accommodating a period of adjustment following significant structural change. The risks involved were very obvious and immediate, while the benefits were more speculative and would take time to realise.

    Creating conditions

    We have arrived at two broad conclusions: the first being that government and OfS, in tandem with other interested parties such as the Competition and Markets Authority could adopt a number of measures to reduce the risks for providers entering into discussions about strategic collaboration.

    This would not involve steering particular providers or taking a formal view about what forms of collaboration will best serve public policy ends, but would signal a broadly supportive and facilitative attitude on the part of government and the regulator. As one head of institution observed, a positive agenda around the sector’s collaborative activity would be much more galvanising than the continued focus on financial distress.

    The second is that institutions themselves may need to consider their approach to these challenges and think through whether they have the right mix of skills and knowledge within the executive team and on the Board to do scenario planning and strategic thinking around structural change.

    In the last decade, the goal for Boards has been all about making their institution stronger, and more competitive. While that core purpose hasn’t gone away, it could be time to temper it with a closer attention to the ways that working in a more collective way could help higher education prepare itself for whatever the future throws at it.

     

    This article is published in association with Mills & Reeve. View and download Connect more: creating the conditions for a more resilient and sustainable higher education system in England here.

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