Professor Andy Schofield sits down with Features editor Elizabeth Sobel following his appointment as Principal and Vice-Chancellor.
Professor Andy Schofield assumed the position of Principal and Vice-Chancellor of the University of Glasgow on October 1st, after holding the positions of Vice-Chancellor at the University of Lancaster and Pro-Vice-Chancellor at the University of Birmingham.
To find out more about Schofield’s values and plans for the University, the Glasgow Guardian interviewed him on November 13th. Schofield wore a blue suit adorned with a University of Glasgow pin and gave thoughtful responses that gave the impression of a man whose vision for the University was very much still a work-in-progress. His values are a reflection of his academic career, as his leadership style takes many lessons from his background in physics.
“To the outside world, if you saw a physics discussion, you would think it looked quite confrontational, with people standing up saying, ‘That’s the stupidest idea I’ve ever heard. I can’t believe you’ve made a mistake like this’, but it’s always done in a very constructive fashion. The people you’ve had the fiercest academic arguments with, you’ll go out for a meal with afterwards and it’s not a personal thing. It’s about a quest for excellence or the right answer, and in that quest, you’ll have robust and tough arguments, call things out that you think are wrong, and you’ll be wrong in calling them out, and someone will tell you back, and through that dialogue, you come away with a better kind of decision making”, Schofield said.
Many of the day-to-day responsibilities of being Principal and Vice-Chancellor are outward-facing: representing the University of Glasgow to other universities all around the world, and representing the university sector to the government, but Schofield seems to be deeply concerned with the inward-facing aspects of the job.
One key internal responsibility is convening the Senior Management Group (SMG), the Principal’s advisors on policy matters, who also help support Schofield with an intense workload. He describes this as making the job feel “like a team sport, as opposed to a single person doing it.”
“You get something so much richer from the variety of experience around the room, so my job is to make sure that around the room there is that variety of experience”, Schofield said.
Schofield emphasized the importance of not just his team, but the entire University, including students, communicating if they feel his decisions are unreasonable, and questioning why they might be made.
“If I haven’t got a good answer for it, that should tell you something and tell me something—that maybe we need to think differently about it”, Schofield said.
The anticipation of forming a new University Strategy was a recurring theme of the interview; Schofield questioned, “What do we want to look like as a university in ten years time? How will we know that we’ve got there?”
While some changes are to be expected with new leadership, the transition from one Principal to the next may not be a shock to staff and students.
“The sort of instincts that Anton [Muscatelli] has led the University with align, as far as I can tell, with the sort of thinking I would have”, Schofield said.
Some of these instincts may be pivotal in his ability to lead, but others may be controversial with students. In his interview with SRC President Duncan Calvert, Schofield emphasised that the issue of divestment from arms, one that is supported by 81% of staff and 86% students of the University, was up to the University Court and not him individually. Despite distancing himself, Schofield explained the decision not to divest:
“For the University to put a blanket statement out, saying that the whole sector is one that we have a particular view on, I think recognizing the elected Government’s position, would be inconsistent with some of the other things that we do around academic freedom for our researchers to research and partner with legitimate companies going about their business”, Schofield said.
At Schofield’s previous position as Vice-Chancellor of the University of Lancaster, in 2021 students petitioned for a vote of no confidence to be held in Schofield and the University’s Senior Management, citing the lack of an ethical investment policy, along with their handling of COVID-19 policies. While the University of Glasgow has a Socially Responsible Investment Policy, this does not prohibit investment in the arms industry.
Schofield was given a fairly hostile welcome at UofG, as students and members of the Glasgow University Justice for Palestine Society gathered outside the library on September 24th to protest Schofield’s appointment. The society argued on Instagram that he “shamelessly plays puppet for the zionist entity, suspending students and inviting external security firms on campus.”
Regarding UofG’s protests, Schofield added in his interview with the Glasgow Guardian, “It breaks your heart. I would be upset if students didn’t feel that level of upset.”
Protest can be one form of constructive debate, and a way for the broader community to put a check on senior University management. For Schofield, this means it should be respected, up until a point.
“What I want to create in the University is an environment where people can have strong views, people can protest, but there is also space to explore those ideas, to be challenged”, Schofield said.
When protest compromises safety and comfort, Schofield’s view is that the dialogue is no longer productive.
“I want this place to feel like home, and people have varying experiences of home life, but my experience isn’t of a place where everybody agrees with each other. You can have some of the fiercest arguments in your home life that you can imagine. But at the end of it, you’re all in the same house, you’re in the same family, and you move on. It would be a tragedy if in someone’s family, you go, ‘Well, I don’t go in the kitchen because that person’s there or I’m afraid of that.’ You know, that’s not what family feels like”.
Part of creating a space for conversation is creating a safe space, and especially a place where the health of members of the University community is prioritized. Schofield expressed his concern for gender-based violence, as well as creating changes that better support student mental health. The first of these changes is from the University’s Good Cause policy which has recently been replaced by an Extenuating Circumstances policy. This change was announced following the death of student Ethan Brown.
“We are growing support for mental health. We are trying to provide it in ways that are easily accessible. I think students often think that looks like a counseling session with an individual, face to face, tomorrow or now, and obviously there will be occasions where that need is so urgent that needs to happen, but sometimes it’s around getting access to people who can say that actually the experience you are going through right now, it feels very stressful and let’s talk about it, but actually it does fit into the larger landscape of what others are going through,” Schofield said.
While Schofield described growing mental health services, he also described outsourcing to non-UofG specific services and prioritizing connection to the NHS over treating at the University level.
“The University can’t do everything, not least because the NHS is there to pick up some of the more critical and clinical aspects of mental health, so for us it’s about finding the level of support that gives students what they need. We can never afford to be the sort of one-stop-shop that solves every issue that comes. We need to work with partners in the city to do it, and so making sure that students can navigate that complexity is really important to me too”, Schofield said.
Wellbeing of staff, especially in the wake of large-scale redundancies at both the Universities of Dundee and Edinburgh, is also a timely concern for Scottish universities. Schofield said that this should not be a concern for staff, given the University’s handling of finances.
“There are no plans for redundancies, but we are being careful with every post that becomes vacant”, Schofield said.
In all aspects of University life, wellbeing is a priority for Schofield, but he may emphasize making systematic changes rather than individual treatments.
“We’re trying to look at those systems and go, ‘how do you make sure there are as few [as possible], ideally zero, cracks for people to fall through?’”
The question remains of whether these cracks can be mended, or whether issues from his time at Lancaster will follow Schofield here, but his openness to critique and a diversity of opinion may allow students to communicate with the most senior member of University staff in an unprecedented way.
“Encouraging people to be bold and speak out when they aren’t comfortable with something is an important part of it”, Schofield described his style of leadership.
“I want the University to be something that we’re all proud of, whether we’re staff members or students, but also just in the community thinking, ‘that’s a place that makes a real difference’”. Schofield concludes:
“I want ‘World Changing’ to mean something to everybody.”
