Creating Citizen Students with the University of Chester
Description:
Justine Greening sits down with the passionate and inspiring Professor Eunice Simmons, Vice Chancellor of the University of Chester. They delve into Eunice's impressive career, the University's innovative "citizen student" strategy, and the essential work being done to enhance social mobility, diversity, and fairness of access in and beyond the campus. They discuss the shifting landscape of higher education, the rise in mature students, and the University's support for care leavers and estranged students. This episode is a deep dive into how education, entrepreneurship, and a community-centric approach can lift a region and build purposeful future professionals. Whether you're a student, an academic professional, or an avid learner, this conversation provides food for thought on the true purpose of education and the role of universities in shaping our society.
Transcript:
Justine Greening:
Welcome to this latest Fit for Purpose podcast. This week, I'm delighted to be joined by Professor Eunice Simmons. She's vice Chancellor of the University of Chester. And I might say this Eunice. I think she's a really great example of almost a new generation of Vice Chancellors who are leading our higher education system now, really focused on social mobility and that broader purpose of what a university can do in a wider community. We'll get into that a lot more during this discussion. But Eunice, it's great to have you on the podcast. Maybe start by telling us a bit more about the University of Chester and almost that footprint it has in the community, both externally, but the sorts of students that are coming to the university.
Eunice Simmons:
Great. Well, it's good to be on the podcast, Justine. I mean, we've obviously worked together on this agenda for quite a few years from a previous institution. I remember you visiting and widening participation, as you say, has been a thread really running through my career. So I started at Chester in January 2020, just in the face of COVID So that obviously preoccupied us somewhat. But we did manage to, with the help of Nous Consulting, actually do a very good strategy and we focused it on the students, back on the students, which actually, for COVID was exactly the right thing to do. And we encapsulated in the term citizen student, because what we're looking for is the students to not just be experts in their subject areas, but also to think about while they're at university with us, think about the value set they espouse, how they're going to be as citizens in their workplace and in their society. What role are they going to play? And actually, that stood us in good stead over the last four years or so.
Eunice Simmons:
As we've developed the university, we've grown our international students, so we now lean into the ideas of global citizens, both for our home students and those who come from overseas. And that again, has worked really well. We've looked at all sorts of things like race equality. We've looked at employability and fairness of access into professions. All those sorts of strands of work have woven through the strategy and really are starting to set us apart, I think.
Justine Greening:
And the intake that you get into Chester obviously comes from a really diverse part of our communities. But actually, Chester plays its role in making sure that young people from particularly disadvantaged backgrounds can get into the institution and then really successfully study and get their degree. It does.
Eunice Simmons:
We have a really strong admissions department with a lot of emphasis on fair access, some sort of best in class practices in terms of outreach versus marketing activity. They're really very clear about what we're doing in terms of interpreting access so that it is for the university sector rather than just for Chester. And actually that plays quite well to our advantage. So yes, I think we get about 50% of our students from the locality and then another 50%, not exactly overlapping with that, are students who are first in family to university. And we also have quite a high proportion, more than 20% mature students. So that's classed as students over 21, for example. So they have numbers applying to university from that sector have actually decreased. So we're quite keen to do a lot of work in that area.
Eunice Simmons:
So our access work isn't just actually about college and school leavers. And I think it's important to bear that in mind.
Justine Greening:
And I guess over time, there are more people who are essentially choosing to get into higher education at different stages of their lives. This tradition of almost people finishing their A levels and then going straight on to university, that's less the case now than it's been in the past, I suppose.
Eunice Simmons:
Well, I'm not sure if it's actually less the case this past year because the numbers were going down a little bit in terms of direct entry from schools and colleges. This year, we've actually seen an uptick in students who were over 35. So that is really an interesting COVID. It might be something to do with cost of living and need people wanting to upskill and reskill. It might be because the workplace itself is changing quite a lot with increased flexibility, working from home, et cetera. So we're watching that very carefully and doing a lot of support for commuter students and students with families.
Justine Greening:
And I guess it sits alongside the wider work that the university does, really supporting some really different students with really different lifestyles, whether they are students who are care leavers, whether they are students who perhaps are younger but nevertheless estranged from their families. I think there's an awful lot that Chester does to really think, as you said, Eunice, from that student perspective, and if you like, the support that some really different people need if they're going to thrive whilst they're at the university.
Eunice Simmons:
Yes, that's right. I mean, care leavers are a huge priority for us and we are very pleased to give them incredibly personalized support to get them into work settings, workplaces and experience, and also to support them in the vacation times between the teaching sessions, because that's where those students actually need ongoing support and commitment. Estranged students, likewise, and that group is growing. And as you said, they are younger than they used to be, so that is important. Indeed, there are more children in care in this area, in Chester Borough. So not just the city, but the borough, there's 600 young people in care, which is a lot, that's a lot of individuals. And you think about them needing to come through to university, that's a lot of support required if they were to come to their local university, which I hope they do.
Justine Greening:
And obviously we're really proud to have you. Part of the purpose coalition and it's really that coalition of some very different employers, but also crucially universities who are working individually and collectively on social mobility. And for the universities, of course, what we've really wanted to show is a campaign through which we can talk about just how much work is being done in communities, raising standards in schools, but also then that economic shape that a university like Chester delivers through its more local communities. So let's kind of move on to both of those. In terms of that work, you mentioned it briefly earlier, working with local schools and colleges, really creating those pathways for people, perhaps, who never would have thought, I'm going to go on to university because that's not something that their family maybe has done in the past. Tell us a little bit about just how much effort you put into that and the sorts of schools that you're working with locally. How many students are you, in a sense, coming into contact with through that?
Eunice Simmons:
Yes, well, it's thousands of school pupils, for a start, and universities have always done a lot of outreach. I mean, academics are good at going and talking about their subject that they love and trying to get the next generation interested. But Justine, what actually has proven to be the case is that we as research type organizations have never really done much research into what works in that outreach endeavor. So you can get fantastic academics going out enthusing and some real professionals in the outreach scene who are great, but you can also get people who really aren't going to ever shift anybody's opinion about universities. So I chair something called Tazo Transforming Access and Student Outcomes, and that's funded by the OFS, and it's to get universities to really evaluate what's working. Does a summer school work for them? Or, for example, would it be better to work with fewer schools over a much longer time period, go in early, get into the junior years and actually follow the same cohort through for ten years, for example? That's the sort of longitudinal work which is proving to be very effective. So there's loads of resources on Tezo.org and Chester itself is trying to be really strict in evaluating its own activities. It's quite hard, though, when an academic comes and says, I want to go out and talk about my chemical engineering experiments or something.
Eunice Simmons:
We still, of course, enable them to do that, but at the same time, what we're really keen on is knowing that that's going to have a real effect on people's aspirations and the fact they might then want to go off to university, whether that subject or indeed another. So, yeah, we work very hard with that. So we also, I think, play up something which is underplayed in some universities is the schools of education, the teacher training. So if I just give you an example, we do 1200 placements a year with teacher trainees. Now that's a real force for good, if they also have a social mobility mindset, if they're going in not just thinking about the fact they're going to be a history teacher, but they're thinking, I wonder who these people are in front of me, I wonder where their lives are going to take them. I can role model some of this, not just interest in academic subject, but aspiration to get on and become a professional in the workplace. So there's all sorts of ways that we encourage our teacher trainees to think about that because we work with more than 800 schools and that's a big outreach in and of itself.
Justine Greening:
I think that's such an important point and it's often missed, I think actually in policy making circles, that once you do that teacher education through higher education institutions, rather than perhaps the alternative mode, which is to do it more at a school level, actually it does get to a whole range of schools. As you say, you have a footprint that is absolutely enormous. So it's not just the very direct work that you're doing that perhaps people may be more familiar with going into schools, talking about the potential to get to university, the kinds of degrees you could do, where it might lead. It is that more fundamental footprint of you are also training up and turning out the next people who are going to be the teachers in these schools too. And there's a chance to have them go into it with almost that Chester mindset of changing lives for the better. In this case through education.
Eunice Simmons:
Yes, potential broader than just the subject area. So of course we want them to be great history teachers, but I also want them to be people who are looking at their classes really in a holistic way thinking what are the triggers that might help these people, how might an intervention or an introduction help them do something more ambitious with their lives? Potentially so. Although it isn't all about aspiration because young people actually do have an awful lot of inbuilt aspirations, it isn't just that we have to inject that into them, it's actually the fact we want them to be able to express it and try things out. So effectively trying out universities or engaging with some aspect of the university is a great thing and we do a lot of that in our locality and further afield.
Justine Greening:
And of course at the other end of the pipeline, almost having encouraged people to come in and if you like have that higher education experience, it's then the role of a university like Chester to really shape where people connect up to an opportunity. And I think one of the things that is being increasingly understood is the role of universities in driving a local economy, shaping the sectors through often through research in some cases, but also then as you were talking about providing that talent pipeline, it's probably worth. And of course there's the entrepreneurship piece, isn't there? It's probably worth. Let's talk a little bit about the breadth of that work that a Chester would be doing for your own locality on driving economic opportunities.
Eunice Simmons:
Yes, so we are worth millions and millions of pounds to the local economy. There was a really neat piece of research that came out recently, a couple of months ago, that showed that our sort of university adds about 2000 pounds for each constituent in our sort of area. That's pretty impressive. Obviously builds up into many millions when you think about our overall impact. So what we want to do is work with employers and look at their requirements and who they're expecting to employ, what they need into the future and then match our local students potentially with them. And so we're doing quite a lot of that work. And that's where the Purpose coalition, I think, has added a lot of sort of strength to our activities in that area by making us really systematically approach our employers and have this conversation really about their workforce. So the sorts of things that I think you've been doing about who are our existing workforce, what's their background, where they come from and doing that.
Eunice Simmons:
Actually, we've had some really good visiting speakers and role models coming in from industry, from different sectors, including the health sector actually. So the NHS Long Term Workforce Plan has been launched. University of UK has put a great response paper to it, actually. Really thoughtful. But the thing that's come out, which is absolutely across this agenda, is that the NHS and the social care system are going to have to take in a wider group of people so from wider backgrounds at different ages to make this actually work. Because the number of people required across all of those health professions is huge to really get the NHS back on its feet. So we're deeply engaged with the integrated care systems and the boards that run those in our various geographies. We're right across into Birkenhead and if you go across that rural peninsula, the health inequalities there are huge.
Eunice Simmons:
Some ten years, ten or twelve years in life expectancy, just in a few miles. If you go across from Wallacey down to south of the Wirral and we've got a big center there. We're working with Fe, and that's another important thing we haven't mentioned. The pipeline through from Fe colleges is really significant. Likewise in Warrington and Warrington vale Royal College have got a health academy. We're working with them and we've got a centre in Warrington and in Shropshire and then we center in Chester with a very significant number of students working for health and social care. So there's a massive amount we're doing for public sector as well as for the big private employers. And then at Chester and Cheshire actually has a huge SME number of employers who in that small category.
Eunice Simmons:
So how do they get support in thinking about widening access and participation in their businesses. So we are trying to weave a narrative. It's fair to say we're in the early days of that. So look forward to working with you on trying to get the SMEs engaged more in this agenda.
Justine Greening:
I think there's a really big opportunity, and I guess for the university itself, also supporting your own students with that entrepreneurial mindset that they can bring to this, the fact that actually many of them won't necessarily go on to work for someone else, they'll go on to work for themselves, they'll be setting up their own businesses. And I know that the university works with them and I think that wider SME cohort of businesses you were talking about to support that economic growth through advice and all of that additional support that they need.
Eunice Simmons:
Yes, that's right. And being an entrepreneur, it sounds very grand, but actually, a lot of our students, they just want to start a small business, see if it works, try it out before they go and get employed. It's a real thing nowadays, I think, post COVID, the flexibility of taking responsibility for your own workplace and working from home is very significant. I think this is a change that we should lean into and say, this is probably a good thing, but it's pretty lonely. So what we're trying to do is support businesses. We have innovation centers, for example, where businesses cluster together. That's not a new idea, but I think it's even more important, post COVID, that you don't allow people to think, oh, they've just got to stay at home and pursue this business idea. There's an awful lot they can learn.
Justine Greening:
From each other, so it's networking them together. But I think I want to come on to the NHS again. But before we do that, the point you just made is really interesting around how the attitudes towards student of students are changing. So I think when I was a young personal senior many years ago, I would have loved to start my own business, but actually, I think I would have been the only person in my peer group thinking about that, and I probably was the only person thinking about that. And I certainly didn't know anyone who ran a business. I didn't know anyone who'd built up a business. I think now there's partly in an internet age where actually setting up a business can just mean doing a website. I think for people like me, it meant you needed some premises to do something.
Justine Greening:
So do you just feel your sense of the students at Chester is they're just thinking about this much more routinely now as a route forward for them with their career, whereas for my generation, I think we all just assumed we'd go and work for someone else's business.
Eunice Simmons:
That's exactly right. You don't have to be employed. You can actually be your own person, your own agent, your own business. So what we're trying to do if I have a fantastic careers employment service. So they've pivoted a bit, and that's really important. They've pivoted to support students getting part time work while they're with us, because we are acknowledging that most of our students also work as well as study. So what we're doing in that is getting a merit from it that's more than just the fact they get support with cost of living, which is very significant. We're trying to talk to them about responsibilities they have in the workplace.
Eunice Simmons:
Do they do customer interface? Do they handle money? What are they actually doing and can they get on to the next rung? Even in a business, for example, around Cheshire, there's a huge number of hospitality businesses. It's a big part of our local economy. And they come towards us, those employers wanting our students. So we've made a real merit of that and got some positive engagements to then get the students to go on and do managerial jobs in those organizations. What they're actually doing is building their social capital. That's the expression that we use, students getting into any sort of workplace. And I've done research with colleagues that shows if we get a work experience as part of a student's career with us, time with us, it will really embellish their opportunities. And if you then overlay that with a confidence building set of activities, including in the curriculum, which help the students think they could be their own boss, you then get a really interesting mix where you're not just thinking it's the business school where you might find an entrepreneur.
Eunice Simmons:
If you actually think it could be in humanities or it could be in social sciences, they could become an influencer, or they could develop a product in product design, for example, that gets to be really interesting. That's our ambition for Chester students, where they can really think about all of those options as they get towards the end of their course with us.
Justine Greening:
And I think it's a big challenge back then to employers, and this is one of the debates and the discussions we're having, it's a live one with employers in the Purpose Coalition. They need to think about to what extent can they themselves support that next generation that thinks, yeah, maybe I'd like a bit more flexibility because I want to try this other thing out whilst I'm actually maybe starting what? Could be my career with you, but actually might be something that I do for five or six years or longer whilst I'm building this up. And actually I'm going to work for an employer and work with a business that supports my aspirations. And I think that's what's really fascinating. As you say, we've got businesses like the Co op who are part of the Purpose Coalition. They absolutely provide some crucial jobs and roles for people who are students, for whom that then means they can pay through university. But actually, if you can make those roles far more career and social capital building whilst they're at it. All the better.
Eunice Simmons:
Yeah, all the better, really. And they're more likely to come back to that employer in the future. So we've committed for our COVID students to giving them ongoing career support. We used to do a sort of year or so after they graduated. Now it's a commitment to say you can come back at any stage and get career planning and it's at an individual level. You can also take part in the workshops, et cetera, and you can take part in our very important networks, our employer networks. And that's significant because I think people are going to iterate their careers more. I think maybe they're going to be self employed for a while, then they might want to be in a workplace, because there's no doubt also that particularly younger people, they want to go to a work setting, some of them.
Eunice Simmons:
They've been at home quite a lot, they actually want to go out and be in a work setting with people and get a bit of a social life from work. So we mustn't forget that we are trying to facilitate their ability to do that as well.
Justine Greening:
And it's giving them choices at the end of the day, isn't it, to really try out different routes and then, over time, work for themselves, which I think is something that more and more students are now considering doing. But I wanted to take us back to the NHS, actually, because one of the most exciting things on the horizon for Chester is the new medical school, which will be opening, I think I'm right in saying, in September next year. Now, you talked a little bit about just how important that talent pipeline is for Chester that you provide to the local NHS already. Tell us a little bit about this next big step on the horizon, why it matters and in a sense, that social mobility piece of ease to it. What's so important about it, certainly?
Eunice Simmons:
Well, I mean, we have a big health and social care provision, we're good at that. We have 456 nurses going out, for example, in a year. That's a lot of people across all of those different geographers I was talking about, we also have position associate that's a level below a medic. People might not be familiar, but they take a lot of responsibility and they ease the workload of the medics. So we are now going to be running our own graduate entry. So following a degree, a four year graduate program, so that that enables someone to become a doctor with us. And that's, in conjunction with the University of Warwick as our academic partner and the General Medical Council are accrediting us to be able to go forward with that program. So we will take some international students and they were already coming through the pipeline because obviously this takes a huge amount of planning.
Eunice Simmons:
So this has been some years in development, but we have just recently been awarded 50 funded places for UK students. And that's where the social mobility piece fits in because we are really committed to more local students coming because we know they will stay locally. And we're in what's called an underdoctored area. Just interesting phrase. There aren't enough medics in our area. Partly in the rural areas to the south of us, but also in the metropolitan areas to the west and the north. So there's a shortage. And we do know there's lots of evidence to show that students who come from within the hour studied distance will be more likely to stay within that area.
Eunice Simmons:
So we're looking hard at the backgrounds they're coming from and how we'll be able to support them to stay on program, because all medical qualifications are very challenging programs.
Justine Greening:
But I suppose in the know what's really powerful about this is if the NHS is going to provide the best care, then it really needs to be representative at all levels of that community that it's providing the care for. That's how it's best going to tailor its services. So almost the more you can open up those sorts of new careers for people, perhaps doing it in a smart way as well as you say. Eunice the fact that actually, maybe if you don't know anyone who's a GP or a doctor, that's not a profession you necessarily think about. But maybe post your degree when you've got a bit more experience, at that stage, you could start to take a decision. I think understanding that that is going to be the journey for a lot of people and then providing a way for them to take those next steps on their doorstep, I think is a really smart approach that will steadily provide a lot more local, literally local GPS to provide the local doctors that the region needs, hopefully.
Eunice Simmons:
So. And that's one reason why we wanted to go on that graduate route rather than starting just with school leavers. There's an emerging apprentice route which is also quite interesting that's being piloted in a couple of universities. I think it's ambitious for us to take that on too soon, but it's certainly something of interest because we do have, for example, nursing associate apprenticeships, which are very successful, and social work likewise. And the other thing is to look at how people could go from one route into another, so they might have started in nursing, how can they then potentially move or between maybe from precision associate even into medicine? So there'll be other pathways emerging, I think, in the next few years to address this long term plan.
Justine Greening:
I think it's really, really exciting how you could see it all steadily add up to an overall set of pathways that almost it didn't matter whether you were earlier in your thinking or later, you can get to where you ultimately want to go and it's not all a one shot. Make your mind up at 16, do the right A levels, otherwise that's it. I think that's what is really exciting about all of this. But I really want to finish.
Eunice Simmons:
It's a game changer, I think, because you're right, at 18, not everybody knows that they're going to have the capacity to be a doctor or to go high up in NHS management or whatever it is. I think this idea that people can come in slightly later and have the same opportunities opening up and in fact is going to be really important to attract people back into these professions if we're really going to stem the loss of professionals in the health service.
Justine Greening:
I wanted to finish, actually, Eunice, by hearing a little bit more about your own journey. And I guess most people, when they're know at an earlier age, thinking, what might I end up doing as my career? Don't necessarily think about higher education, maybe definitely don't think about running a university. So tell us a little bit about that career path for you, because it's so unusual to come across P Two of Vice Chancellors. It's really interesting for people to get a sense about how you end up doing that sort of a role.
Eunice Simmons:
Yes, well, thank you for that question. It's quite a hard one because obviously, looking back, it becomes as if it was logical, but I think I've always had a focus on the students. So I taught science for a couple of years in school, loved it, but I missed the research, I missed the university side of things. I went back and did a master's and then I did a PhD, but while I was doing the PhD, I was looking after a hall of residence and that experience then continued just as a student, as a student, as a postgrad student. So I was about five minutes ahead of the ones that I was trying to keep quiet in the corridors in the evening. So that was really a good learning curve, for sure. So I then spent about a decade actually doing student affairs while I was also an academic and teaching. And in fact, my husband and I actually did live in a hall of residence for a couple of years when we first got married and had our first child.
Eunice Simmons:
So there wasn't anything I hadn't seen about the student journey. We'd seen tragedy, we'd seen great happiness, we'd seen birth, the whole bit. That was a whole life history of students, and I think I've always kept that then going forward. So I've managed areas, but I've also kept responsibilities for student affairs. So I've been a dean of school, but I've also then had responsibility for the professional services side, the student affairs side, and latterly then I ended up at Nottingham Trent after going around five other universities, and I was responsible there for academic affairs and student affairs, which was great preparation to. Be a Vice Chancellor because, of course, everything comes across my desk and I have to have great teams managing all of those different areas. But it really helps that I have lived the detail quite a lot of that through my career. So it sort of ended up that I thought, you know, I can take that VC job, I can do that because I have done or come across touched most of the areas of the university.
Justine Greening:
And did you have a mentor or someone who was there also saying to you, look, come on, you've really got the whole skill set now, it's time to now just go out there and step into that VC role. That's the next stage for you.
Eunice Simmons:
I mean, my previous boss, certainly Edward Peck, would be a case in point. He was hugely encouraging. I worked with him for five years, and before that, I was really fortunate. I had some great mentors, particularly women, who'd, interestingly, Justine, maybe not quite made it. And really, I could see they should have made it. And I felt quite early on that there were a lot of women in academia who were doing the heavy lifting when it came to administration, supporting students, et cetera. But because they weren't publishing as much as their male counterparts, they weren't advancing as quickly. It was pretty obvious to me early on in my career that that was the case.
Eunice Simmons:
I still lent into the stuff I liked, which was supporting students and teaching, but I still kept an eye on the fact that I needed to be able to move upwards and I try and help academics do that here at Chester.
Justine Greening:
I think it's really interesting. I know I need to finish now because we've run out of time, but, Eunice, it's been fantastic having you doing the podcast today. I think the work that you're leading at the University of Chester is really important. I think it's taking the university to the next stage of its life and the next level of its impact. And I think whether it's the work that you're doing within that local community broadening access, whether it's the work you're doing to support that local economy, and we talked about the work with entrepreneurship and SMEs and businesses, or whether it's the work that you're doing that is utterly crucial to support local public services like the NHS, like the education system. I just think it's such a good example of a university that is playing that much, much bigger role for a wider know. Thank you for doing all of that. I think it has huge impact, it's brilliant leadership.
Justine Greening:
So, Professor Eunice Simmons, Vice Chancellor of the University of Chester, it's been brilliant having you on the podcast today, so thank you you for the time.
Eunice Simmons:
Thank you very much, Justine. And it's great working with the Purpose Coalition. Thank you.
Justine Greening:
Thank you.
