Building the Right Curriculum Advisory Board and recruiters

[Former Member]

What are the best ideas for building the right curriculum advisory board and connecting with more recruiters that are looking for SAP educated students?

[Former Member]

Hello Simha,

Excellent points - I'd agree with everything you said. In fact I think virtually every one of my members has an advisory board though I've had to dial back my involvement because at one point a few years ago I was on ten - now I'm on two! There are so many partners and so many customers that are interested in obtaining students and in forming links with potential advisors that you'll never have a problem identifying people to serve on an advisory board.

The question is who do you invite and what can they bring to the university. One example I can give which worked semi-well is a university which had myself, Microsoft, Royal Bank of Scotland, IBM, Unilever and people from research bodies. However there were no representatives from small businesses and the reps from research bodies were invited to meetings on how to improve teaching which of course they weren't qualified in or interested in advising on. To its' credit the university then had two advisory boards - one for research and one for teaching / the student experience / course and curricula content. This worked better.

What was great was that employers had a direct input into curricula content. However you have to be a wee bit careful in the selection of the people - the company name isn't enough. You also have to have people that are genuinely interested in the topic and offer advice that is thought out and valuable rather than whatever they could think of at the time. I think often it would be better to have a smaller and more commited group who are able to play a role long term and who are involved in course teaching themselves, rather than bringing together boards that meet once a year. This is particularly the case if the board members aren't allowed to see minutes of other meetings or review university plans ahead of the meeting - in which case the responses will never be as considered as they should be and may even be detrimental.

Martin

Martin Gollogly

Director, University Alliances

United Kingdom and Ireland