New challenges, new solutions
Advance HE is dedicated to supporting the development of our members based on sector needs, and provides funding to help enable this. Previously, funding had been in the form of our Small Development Projects (SDPs), which were launched in 2004 and more recently, our Good Practice Grants.
For the 2020-21 member benefit year, funding will be available to our global membership base in the form of our Collaborative Development Fund, comprising three projects under the themes of equality, diversity and inclusion in governance, education and strategy and culture. The collaborative projects aim to harness the knowledge, experience and innovative capabilities of our members in order to address current challenges within the HE sector.
The Collaborative Development Fund is an Advance HE member benefit. We invited our colleagues at member institutions to apply for the funding of between £20,000 and £35,000 per project, with projects starting in February 2021.
Queen Mary University of London has been successful for the Education theme – ‘Developing flexible ecosystems for education that support student success: where are we now, what works and where next?’
The University of Gloucestershire has been awarded funding, in collaboration with Perret Laver, for the Governance theme, ‘Board diversity practice project’.
The reshaping of higher education and research institute strategy and culture: pandemic perturbations, evolution or revolution?’ project will be led by Advance HE.
The funding will support developments in priority areas and the outputs will be shared with Advance HE’s member community.
Further information an project updates can be found on the dedicated project pages below.
The Collaborative Development fund is an Advance HE member benefit and is open to colleagues at Advance HE member institutions.
2020 - 21 Collaborative Development Fund projects
Information on our Collaborative Development Fund projects can be found below.
Developing flexible ecosystems for education that support student success: where are we now, what works and where next?
This project aims to review the higher education sector’s capacity for flexible provision to identify exemplars of the requisite infrastructure, strategies and enabling technologies that support equitable transitions through learning and work and identify priority areas to be addressed by Advance HE or providers.
Board diversity practice project
This project aims to collate, understand and share members’ practice to deliver on board diversity via the sharing of practice and lessons learned from members’ attempts to diversify their boards. This will provide an evidence base for members, potential solutions through an easily-accessible bank of case-studies, and identification of priorities for areas still to address.
The Board Diversity Practice Project is running in collaboration with the international executive search firm Perrett Laver, whose involvement has enabled us to widen the scope of the research and maximise its benefit to Advance HE members and the sector.
The reshaping of higher education and research institute strategy and culture: pandemic perturbations, evolution or revolution?
The central question for this generative project will be ‘how have the strategies of higher education institutions and research institutes changed as a result of the impact of the Covid-19 pandemic?’ The inquiry/research goal will be to review the range of radical changes to institutional strategies (and strategic thinking) brought about so far by the pandemic, and hand-in-hand with this the transformation of organisational cultures.
