Our VP HSS, Samarth, speaks to Martin Coward, head of the School of Society and Environment, about the school merger
Our VP HSS, Samarth, speaks to Martin Coward, head of the School of Society and Environment, about the school merger. This is what he had to say in the video interview which we have transcribed below;
Hi, everyone. My name is Samarth Lakhanpal. I'm your Vice President for Humanities and Social Sciences. With me is Martin Coward. Martin, thanks a lot for being here. For the students, can you please introduce yourself?
Yeah, I'm Martin Coward. I'm currently head of the School of Politics and International Relations. But from the 1st of September, I will be head of the School of Society and Environment.
Okay. It's a new school, I believe, and it's exciting times going forward. Is it possible, if you could explain to the students about the upcoming changes as well as the merger which is happening?
Yeah. So, in the summer, University Senate and University Council agreed to merge the current schools of Geography, History and Politics and International Relations into a new school, Society and Environment. And they agreed to create that school because higher education in the UK is facing a pretty uncertain future. Lots of challenges for recruitment, funding and so on. And this gives us an opportunity to create a bigger school that's better able to cope with those challenges.
Are there any benefits which the students would have from this upcoming merger?
So, one of the things that we're keen to do is to make it easier for staff and students to collaborate across departments. At the moment, you have staff and students in three separate schools, but they're all working on kind of similar types of subjects. You know, history, geography, politics and IR, they cover big questions around society and change over time.
And we hope that this will make it easier to collaborate across those three disciplines, for example, new programs, new research centers, that kind of thing.
As there's a merger going around, how will the students, as well as staff maintain their identities as students of School of History, Politics or Geography after the merger?
That's a really good question. And staff and students were very concerned about this when the university started talking about the merger, and I really appreciate it. One of the things that this school is intended to do is to make the disciplines geography, history and politics ready to face the future. And so we absolutely want to keep disciplinary identity.
The school will be organised into three departments Geography and Environmental Science, History and Politics, and International Relations. And it will still organise its teaching primarily at discipline level. Research will primarily be organised at discipline level. So in that sense, those identities will remain strong. What we will be able to do, I think, is be more efficient because we will be able to kind of operate at the highest scale, but also, we will be able to unlock some of the collaborative possibilities of having those three departments in the same school.
Yeah, I'm happy to hear student identities would remain intact. And this was something which is a big concern among the student body as well. One another concern which the student body had was will the reputation of the departments be affected after the merger?
No, I think, the opposite perhaps, which is that we will have an opportunity to make those departments more visible as a kind of collaborative space in which really interesting things happen. I think one of the things to think about with the school merger is we will be bigger, there will be more students, there will be more academic staff, there will be more opportunities for us to communicate what makes us internationally excellent, both in terms of teaching and research.
So, I think that actually this is a move that helps us to grow the reputation of these three departments.
One question which a lot of students have is how would they be reaching out to their staff support? And after the merger, would there be any delays from the staff support team in reaching out to the students?
I think they reach out in roughly the same way. So, you know at Queen Mary, there were kind of two ways you reach out. Well, three ways that you reach out for support. You can reach out to the professional services teams, the student support offices, and in the school team. There is a new school team in the Geography Building.
As I've said, who you can reach out to. And they will have a new, email address for you to reach out to. The other, the next way as you reach out to your module leaders or your seminar, teachers, that'll stay exactly the same, because you'll be in the same modules, the ones you selected last year.
You know, you'll see those lecturers and so on. And then the third way is, through student advisors. You'll- all students will be allocated student advisors. And obviously, they're there for a sort of pastoral, academic kind of questions. And you can reach out to them in exactly the same way. They will be in touch in Welcome Week or the first couple of weeks, and you can reach out to them.
I don't see why we should experience delays. Life gets busy, but, I don't see we prioritise students, so I don't see why it should make a difference.
As there is going to be a merger, a lot of the concerns, and this one thing popped in my head as well, will our favorite lecturers be gone or is that going to remain the same? Which staff are we expected to see, or is there going to be a big changes around the board?
I don't expect students to experience big changes. Next year, you will still be doing the degree that you registered for. You will still be doing the modules that you registered for, the staff that were due to teach you will, in the most case, still be here. 1 or 2 staff leave us every year, they go to other jobs, they retire, but the vast majority of staff stay the same.
And I don't think in that sense, students will see a lot of change to their actual teaching. The one thing they will notice is there will be a new school office in the Geography Building. So Politics and History students will be used to going to Arts One, and Arts Two will have to get used to going to the Geography Building for student support. But that's the major change that they will experience.
Okay, so I believe the structure of the degree would remain intact as well for all the students, or would that receive a slight change?
No, that- that'll stay exactly the same. So, you will get the degree that you registered for when you came to Queen Mary. The structure of your degree remains the same. So the options and modules that are available to you remains the same. If there are any changes in the future, one of the things to say here is that the opportunity is to create things like new programs.
So, for example, at MA level, we're creating a new degree in War and Society, for example. But as we move through and create and we're doing things to make it easier for students to have more choice at MA level. But as those changes come in, they will only affect new cohorts. So, if you're in the second or third year right now, or even fourth year right now, your degree will remain the same. The same one that you registered for.
Okay. Yeah, that's that's great to hear. A big concern was how are students going to be reaching out to the new department if they are in need of a particular issue or if they're facing something after the merger? I would- is there any new way of reaching out or does this remain the same?
Yeah, there will be new ways. So, I guess there are kind of two ways in which students kind of reach out to us. First is individual students and student support, which is really important to us. And there will be a new student support team in the Geography Building for Politics and History students who are not familiar with the Geography Building.
There's a big reception there, which means we can have a big team in there. So, if you have questions about student support, you can go there. There will also be new email boxes for people to contact when they have student support questions. And we will be communicating those to students. But I also think that's a bigger team in many respects.
Because we've taken three teams and combined them into one. So, students should experience kind of more in terms of student support. The second way is student voice. And, you know, we do still voice students experience and we take that really seriously. And there will be a new school level student voice committee, and we will be looking for reps to contribute and there will be things that will be looking for students to help us do so.
For example, you know, with student experience, we look to student societies to organise events that they want to do around kind of geography, history and politics. So there will be all those opportunities, as there were last year.
One final question which we had. How would students know about the changes which are going to be happening.
Yeah. So, I think that's a really good question. I've been trying to work on it over the summer sending emails, but I know nobody reads emails. So, as we go into Welcome Week, there'll be more communications from the school to students about where to go and who to see and so on. I will also be reaching out to students to see, for example, if they want town hall meetings with me or with other senior staff, in the first few weeks of term.
And then obviously we'll move on to kind of communicating with student voice committee and so on. But also we're doing things like this, talking to the Students' Union, just to try and get the message out to everybody.
Perfect, Martin. Thanks a lot, Martin. That's all the questions that we had. Thank you. Thanks a lot for taking our time. We hope for the best for the merger. And as you know, if you need any help, the Students' Union is always there to support students.