Broadcast: News items

Robin Banerjee, Pro-Vice-Chancellor (Global and Civic Engagement)

I recently had the great pleasure of hosting an Open Forum on the topic of global and civic engagement in Sussex 2035, our new strategy for the next ten years.

As you know, we have been building on last term’s engagement sessions regarding our vision, mission and purpose, and values, by organising a series of conversations based around nine other strategic themes.

I'm leading on one of the core themes, Global and Civic Engagement, and in this week’s session, attended by over 200 colleagues from across the University, we considered a range of propositions and questions regarding the challenges we can seek to address through our engagement, while also considering the high-level changes we need to make in our institution, and the specific goals that we will need to pursue in order to make those changes. You can read more on the context for this work in my background paper.

Challenges where Sussex can make a difference

As Sasha laid out in the initial work on strategy development last term, we need to: identify what makes us truly distinctive, now and for the next 10 years; improve our students’ experience and outcomes; and create real/tangible opportunities for students and staff of all backgrounds. One important way in which we can do this is to identify exactly where Sussex can make a difference in relation to the most pressing challenges of our time.

Three drivers of change have been proposed as a core focus for Sussex 2035: environmental sustainability, human flourishing, and digital and data futures. In the Open Forum this week, I was reflecting on the way in which all three of these speak to the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals, noting that University of Sussex is ranked within the top 50 universities in the world for impact on these SDGs. 

In our discussion, we considered how work on global and civic engagement could help us meet the urgent and long-term challenges posed in this area. We talked about the importance of local placed-based partnerships as well as global alliances with universities and associated organisations around the world, and agreed that our engagement activity could help us find innovative solutions to foster social, economic, and environmental sustainability.

Institutional changes to strengthen our engagement

We are in a strong position to make a difference in these areas, both locally and globally. We have the benefit of an internationally diverse community: we are currently ranked in the global top 50 for international outlook and in the top 100 worldwide for the proportion of international students, with more than 200,000 alumni around the world. Recently 93% of our research was rated in REF 2021 as having ‘very considerable’ or ‘outstanding’ impact, with our performance in the latest Knowledge Exchange Framework (KEF) also showing a ‘very high level’ of engagement in research partnerships, working with business, working with public and third sector, and IP and commercialisation.  

In our Open Forum, we talked about how we could make our global and civic engagement activities more central to the life of our institution, playing a role in the experience of everyone who works and studies at Sussex. We discussed how becoming a ‘partner of choice’ for external organisations would become much more possible if our engagement activity was seen as a core part of the University’s identity and institutional narrative.

One key point highlighted in the discussion was how important it is for us not only to communicate how our education, research, and knowledge exchange can make a difference to external stakeholders, but also to listen to what other organisations are telling us and become more responsive to our partners’ needs.

Goals for prioritisation and recognition

In the final part of the Open Forum, we discussed how we could take a data-driven, evidence-based approach to prioritise and refine our global and civic engagement activity. It will be important to find ways to analyse the effectiveness of our partnerships, and to make sure that we are joined up internally in this work. We also talked about the need for a step change in public and community engagement, making sure that as an as institution there is appropriate recognition and reward for this work in terms of career progress.

In the discussion, colleagues noted the complexity of balancing all the different demands on people’s time. It was felt that for engagement to be truly meaningful, we need to find ways to ensure that global and civic engagement is not just a ‘nice to have’ extra, but instead must be explicitly recognised and valued as a key part of people’s career development.

Overall, the discussion was tremendously helpful in highlighting the shared commitment to global and civic engagement across the University, and pointing to some key issues to work through in taking forward our strategic work over the coming months and years. Indeed, please remember that this is all part of an ongoing journey in the development of Sussex 2035, and even if you couldn’t attend my Open Forum earlier this week, your input would still be hugely valuable and much appreciated. You can view the slides we discussed here, and you can email any comments, observations, and reflections to sussex2035@sussex.ac.uk  

How to find out more about Sussex 2035 

• Visit our strategy webpages (you need to log in to see these). From here you can also read Sasha’s background papers: the first, Sussex 2035 Strategy Paper 1 is focused on the strategy development process while Sussex 2035 Strategy Paper 2 considers our values, mission and purpose, and vision. 
• Email any thoughts, questions or insights to  sussex2035@sussex.ac.uk