It’s been a few weeks now since I was awarded Senior Fellow (SFHEA) of the Higher Education Academy so I thought I would take some time to reflect on the process and pass on my top tips to help get you there too!
Writing about yourself is not always an easy task but Fellowship is very much about you shouting about your practice and getting recognition for the great work you are doing in learning and teaching. You will notice the emphasis on YOU there! So now is the time for me to say my famous line ‘leave your modesty at the door!’ I know this is a hard thing to do but you are going to have to do this if you want to really showcase your work and show that impact! However, this was something I actually didn’t find easy to do myself! As someone who works within the Fellowship team at Nottingham Trent University, I tell colleagues this regularly but we never take our own advice do we? On the subject of taking our own advice, I think there were a few things I struggled with during the process. It was almost like there was the Senior Fellow Facilitator Laura on one shoulder while I was writing and the Senior Fellow Writing Laura on the other! I always tell colleagues working on their Fellowship submission that it is a snapshot of their practice. Fast forward to me writing my submission and I am trying to squeeze everything in which resulted in too many words and a bit of a chopping exercise! It was hard having to chop out those pieces of practice that I really wanted to keep. It’s important to find the things that really showcase your work whilst meeting the criteria. What are you proud of and what will be easy to write? Be proud and brave to showcase your amazing practice!
The power of community
The Fellowship community was a big part of my Senior Fellow journey. As someone who supports staff on the NTU Fellowship Scheme, I was surrounded by others who were going through the process at the same time. Hearing from colleagues about their thoughts, challenges and ideas really helped. Friends and colleagues in the sector were also a great help and the twitter community were a great source of inspiration too! I also had a wonderful Fellowship buddy (thank you Rachel!) who really helped me throughout. This is one piece of advice I would give to anyone going through any category of Fellowship. Don’t do it on your own. Join any workshops that your institution is running, find a buddy who is also writing, share your practice and talk to colleagues. Fellowship doesn’t need to be a lonely process. Rachel and I talked about being in the Fellowship swamp at times and that is ok! Having that buddy there helped me to get out of the swamp when I just couldn’t find my way out! Some days you are up and some days they are down. We helped each other to find our way back out of that Fellowship swamp!
Eat some lemon drizzle…
In terms of Senior Fellow, remember to highlight how you are influencing the practice of others. This is the real shift from Fellow. Think about where you had impact and influence on the practice of others. Who was influenced and how did you support this? What happened because of you? I was told to think about my submission as a lemon drizzle cake where the famous D3.7 of Senior Fellow is drizzling all the way throughout.
D3vii: Successful coordination, support, supervision, management and/or mentoring of others (whether individuals and/or teams) in relation to teaching and learning
It’s so important to make sure this is visible throughout your submission. Think about the language you use. I tried to use words such as influencing, supporting, mentoring to really showcase D3.7.
This is also a good excuse to eat some lemon drizzle cake too. I can assure you it will help with your writing maybe just not your waist line!
The three big things…
Impact – Think about how you are sharing your practice with others and how it’s making a difference. What impact has it had on student experience? Talk to colleagues about your practice. You will be amazed at how many nice things people actually have to say to you. Use these comments about your practice as evidence of impact. There are various ways to show impact. This can be quantitative, qualitative, destination of students, practice changes, achievements others have gained from working with you and sound bites. I created a ‘happy folder’ in my email inbox and saved useful pieces of impact in there. I was told to ‘be more magpie’ which was a great piece of advice! Keep gathering that impact as you go!
CPD – Think about what has influenced you and how you take this back into your practice? How are you developing your CPD? Like impact, CPD can be evidenced in various ways. Formal CPD is great but there are also all those informal opportunities that might have triggered a change in practice or inspired you. Perhaps you attended a really interesting webinar or had a chat with a colleague about something. CPD is happening more often than you think so reflect on what has inspired and motivated you in learning and teaching.
Pedagogy – What pedagogy has influenced your practice? Make sure you refer to this throughout and make it clear that there is pedagogical influence throughout your practice.
My final reflection is to remind people that Rome wasn’t built in a day. I’ll be honest and say when I started my Senior Fellow journey I wasn’t sure where to start. You can read my other blog on the AdvanceHE website that talks about my journey to Senior Fellow and some tips to help you along the way. Start by getting your ideas down on paper and keep revisiting that ideas map. Take 5 minutes or 5 hours to spend some time writing each day or week. Don’t be too hard on yourself. If you sit down to write and you are not in the zone then down tools and just go and eat the lemon drizzle cake instead! A little bit at a time and you will get there eventually. Be proud to shout about your practice. You are doing the work, it’s just a case of getting it down on paper (whilst leaving that modesty at the door!) and getting recognition for it.
So what’s next for me? I’d like to think that I can work towards Principal Fellow some day but for now I am going to continue to be a reflective practitioner as Fellowship doesn’t need to end when you are awarded the post nominals.
Fellowship @NTU 