An update from Rory Stanton, SEED Director of Teaching, Learning and Students
26 Jun 2025
Exams periods, new colleagues, NSS and future teaching
Dear all,
This is my first update as the Director of Teaching, Learning and Students. It has been an interesting journey since last October and I would not be doing my job properly if I didn’t express my sincere appreciation for and acknowledge the support and collegiality of Juup and everyone on the Senior Leadership Team, the wider TLSE team, our hardworking Associate Directors and Directors of Teaching & Learning, Programme Directors, and colleagues across all departments in SEED. Thank you indeed for your support and encouragement.
‘Exams’ Period
As we all know, this is an especially busy time of the year for everyone as we have worked to mark, moderate, and process all of our students through their respective exam boards. None of this work would be possible without the efforts of colleagues in the A&P and SSW teams as well as our departmental Exam Board Chairs, but also the constant effort of everyone making those hard decisions around marks, feedback, and how we support this process as moderators. I feel we need to acknowledge that this has been an especially challenging year for many colleagues particularly at this at this point in the cycle. From my perspective, I see this is as something for us all to work on and I believe that a challenge like this is certainly something we can rise above going forward.
New Colleagues
Speaking of cycles, I would especially like to thank the hard work and dedication of Louisa Dawes, AD for Assessment, and Tom Donnai, AD for Widening Participation, who are completing their terms in post at the end of July. Both have set a standard with regard to their engagement, innovation, and how they have provided leadership in these key roles over the past three years. Our colleagues Claire Goulsbra and Loretta Anthony-Okeke have been appointed as AD for Assessment and AD for Widening Participation respectively. Both take on their new duties on 1 August, and please wish them well in their new roles.
NSS Outcome
My term began with a concentrated build up to the NSS 2025 and I would like to especially thank our UG Programme Directors and SEED IAG who worked hard to accommodate and implement the university’s NSS Action Plan during semester 1 and 2 and who then followed this phase by closely collaborating on enhancing our student response rates through a well-planned and strategic approaches to NSS engagement. The result of which is to once again place SEED as leading the university with respect to our NSS response rates. Well done all round.
Of course, we all have a role to play in ensuring students have a positive experience in our School and so we face a double challenge of first ensuring that we have a good rate of response to the NSS survey but that also the outcome of the survey (due on 9 July) reflects positively on us, our School, and on how we have engaged and interacted with our students. Some of us may not directly teach on an undergraduate programme, but we all have the potential to influence the outcome of the NSS survey. We all can see the goal of positive NSS scores as more of a long-term project, most likely starting by building and strengthening a sense of community and belonging for all SEED students.
In this regard, I had the pleasure of attending my first Student/Staff Liaison Committee in March and met some of our UG and PGT student representatives across SEED. Our discussions were detailed, frank and our representatives have clearly been working hard in their roles and advocating on behalf of the wider student body. I look forward to similar meetings in the coming academic year.
Our Future Teaching
As we all know, the university is beginning various phases of consultation, focusing on how to transform our work in the coming years, characterised by the Manchester 2035 initiative, Manchester Online, etc. A key component of our strategic outlook for the next three to five years has been the Teaching Sustainability Project, which is now looking at further developing our teaching portfolio while seeking to accommodate evolving initiatives like Manchester 2035. More to come on this in the coming months and into the next academic year. Our Directors of Teaching and Learning across SEED’s departments will be kept up to date in the first instance, and relatedly, Fiona Smyth, our Faculty of Humanities Vice Dean for Teaching, Learning and Students, gave a presentation at the June Programme Director Committee on proposals addressing course unit choice for students across our UG and PGT programmes. Information on this has been circulated to PDs and I would appreciate it if you could send feedback my way on this new initiative as soon as possible.
In conclusion…
So, what have I learned? Colleagues in SEED are hardworking, very hardworking. They are insightful and creative and consistently rise to whatever challenge that comes their way. I’ve no doubt that the institute will be equally creative in devising new challenges for us to consider and accommodate next year and beyond. But, based on my short time in this role I have confidence we have the right stuff to adapt, develop, and grow in our changing environment.
Until the next academic year, many thanks to everyone once again.
Rory