Prof Karen Cox

I think my first realisation that I wanted to work in higher education was during my own time at university. I didn’t really know what university was about. My parents hadn’t been, and I didn’t really know anyone else who had been to be honest, so it was really my A Level tutors that encouraged me to think about university. So actually getting there and then experiencing it. I remember sometime looking at my lecturers and thinking "I’d like to work in a university". I enjoyed being part of it, I enjoyed the world it opened up, so I think it was being at university that made me think about a career in higher education. And I think the more I’ve worked in it the more I just am passionate about what a university can do in terms of transforming people’s opportunities, their lives, all of the fabulous ways in which it can really change what happens to us. So I suppose I’m a fan, and that’s from my own personal experience of seeing and feeling what it’s done for me.

The value of higher education is that opportunity to study something you love and to think about that subject in its much broader context. The value that brings then is that you’re not just engaged in understanding more about a particular element of the world, but you’re also thinking about how does that impact on a much wider and bigger society. You start to think about what roles knowledge, generation, and dissemination play in our understanding of the world, what opportunities does being at university bring to somebody because you’re mixing with people right across the world, having experiences you wouldn’t have had from school or college, or maybe if you’re coming back to university from a working environment.

So I think in a way that all of those mean that there’s value to the individual but there’s value to the wider society as well, because it is about developing us as individuals, developing as people, and contributing to society. And I suppose the wider piece about the value of university is all the work that goes on in terms of research. We generate knowledge about how we understand the world, how it works, and that completely transforms the way that we’re able to do things whether that’s locally, regionally or internationally. It’s also a value to society as public good, universities are often places that are part of their local communities. How I got into higher education was partly because of people suggesting it to me, it wasn’t necessarily something I had thought about. I then had the opportunity because I got the grades I needed and I had the support from family even though they didn’t really know much about it, but they wanted to support my ambitions. I suppose when I went to a university back in the late 80’s, your fees were paid and you did get a grant so quite different to 2019, so I didn’t have to think about those elements, I have no idea what I would have done if I had to. I suppose there was the encouragement and support and I was able to get a place.

Before I came to Kent I was at the University of Nottingham, and before Nottingham I worked in the NHS. I did my first degree at Kings College London, and then I worked clinically as a nurse. My background is in nursing and I got my professional registration as well, specialised in cancer and palliative care, and worked clinically and specialised in Oncology in the NHS. Then I moved into clinical community work in the NHS and got interested in going back to university, given all my experiences at university. I ended up going to Nottingham and joined the department where I worked clinically, but was also getting myself in a position to get PhD funding. In 1995 I took up a PhD fellowship at the University of Nottingham funded by the Cancer Research Campaign. I was at Nottingham for 23 years. It didn’t take me 23 years to finish my PhD, although it felt like it! I finished my PhD in 1999 and during that time I had spent a few months at the University of Pennsylvania.

I became a Senior Lecturer and was promoted to Professor pretty rapidly, eventually moving into leadership and management at the university and then subsequently coming to Kent. Kent is a very different university to Nottingham which is about twice the size of Kent and has a big international dimension, so we had campuses in China and Malaysia. So whilst higher education is about education, research and engagement, and that cuts across all universities, there are different flavours. I’d say here at Kent it’s a much smaller university that is more focused on the combination of teaching and research, particularly bringing that to life through the student’s curriculum, and has more of a community feel. It has a really interesting European dimension so not just its geography and history and the county it’s located in, but also the fact that we have postgraduate study centres in Europe, as well as quite a strong European dimension to our academic activity, particularly in our arts and humanities area. I’d say those are the key differences but familiar agendas in wanting to promote access and wider participation. I think Kent has really good student support, taking individuals and really supporting them through their studies.

I think universities generally respond to the regions in which they find themselves. Kent is a 1960’s university so it was set up at a time when higher education was expanding, it was trying to create a sense of academic community through setting up the colleges but was also trying to do things differently, and I think some of that has continued. There’s a very strong sense of academic community here, but there is also a sense of wanting to do things differently. I’d say I like the 1960’s feel, it doesn’t have baggage from hundreds of years ago, it was set up in a time where higher education was seen as a positive thing.

I suppose I had been at Nottingham for a long time and it got to a point where I thought that if I am going to do the next thing, which is Vice Chancellor, I should do it somewhere else. It’s one of those things, it’s a combination of getting approached about things and it catches your eye so you find out more about it, and I liked what I saw. I like the combination between research and teaching, the campus, and the Medway dimension, so that focus on delivering education in environments which traditionally haven’t had higher education, so I applied and I got it and now I'm two years in.

I mean there’s no single person, there are individuals who are particularly important at particular times, for example getting to university would be teachers and family, and I could pick out mentors, friends, my husband and family in terms of supporting you when things get tough, because they do. So there is always the family and friends that keep you grounded and happy, which enables you to take opportunities, but you need networks, you need people looking out for you and people who will suggest you. There are a number of people I still go to for help and advice. I think that you can’t do these things on your own so it’s drawing on those networks and friendships when you need them, and knowing that there are people there in the background rooting for you.

I would say in the last two years, taking on this particular role has been really challenging. When you move from being part of the senior team to actually being “the person” where the ‘buck stops,’ you are the very visible public face of the organisation and that’s quite a lonely place to be. You have to draw on a lot of past experience, a lot of personal inner resilience, as well as trying to enjoy it at the same time, because I think how you experience something will come across to the people around you. If you are not transmitting a sense of confidence and enjoying what you’re doing, recognising the challenges but a sense of we’re going somewhere then actually you’re not being a great leader. And that takes a lot of drawing on experience, building new networks and drawing on that inner strength. I think Kent has challenged me because it’s a new role, it’s not the university it’s the fact that it’s a new role, a senior leadership role, it’s very exposed, and higher education is going through a very challenging time, so there’s quite a public gaze on universities as well.

So I suppose over the last two years it’s meant that I’ve had to grow into the role, and I’m still learning. I’ve had to build up resilience to a certain extent, in terms of protecting myself as much as being able to support others. It’s been fantastic in many respects, not always what you expect but these things never are, and I suppose you feel like you keep learning, so I think Kent has in a way enabled me to make a step change in my leadership journey as it were, and there have been many aspects which were challenging, and I’ve got new networks and new friends.

I just really enjoy being part of very interesting conversations. I think for me most of my teaching career has been with people working in health care, and so being part of their developmental journeys around being the future health care workforce, or engaging with colleagues going back into education to do post registration professional development courses, I just really enjoyed feeling I was contributing to those elements. At the same time there was so much learning from whoever was in the room at the time , which could be undergraduates in their first few weeks with us, mentoring a group through a particular work based project, right through to supervising PhD students. Partly you have your own experiences of being a student and remembering what worked and what didn’t, so I think giving people time and being interested in them and their hopes and ambitions, not getting so involved that you’re doing it for them but giving them the building blocks to be able to manage things for themselves and to be able to grow and develop.

I still have a couple of PhD students, and thoroughly enjoy the interactions I have with my Kent Union colleagues and students in discussion groups, and that’s where you actually get a sense of what it’s like to be here at this university, as much as any organisation, when you’re actually talking with people who are studying or working in it, right across the different departments and that’s when you really start to get a sense of what works here.

I remember as an undergraduate having the opportunity to do a piece or research and produce a dissertation and I thought “this is fantastic, I have all these questions I want to answer and I can look at different ways of addressing the gaps in it”. So it was that initial undergraduate opportunity to do something that you couldn't get from a textbook, to actually create some knowledge, was an experience that very much fuelled my interest in wanting to do something further. I suppose as I left university I didn’t think I was going to do a PhD, you leave university and think you’re never going to study again. But as I got out there I became more intellectually hungry to do something else, and was seeing things in clinical practice that raised questions for me that I wanted to get answers to, so for me the best way to do that was doing further research and a PhD.

Continuing from that, you produce a PhD and it is examined and assessed, but you still have issues there which you want to pursue, so that for me became my program of research work that I pursued right up until now as I still get involved with projects. I think it’s that intellectual curiosity, it’s generating new knowledge about an issue or a problem, and then seeing that being discussed in academic literature or taken up to change practice or policy. And yes, it might be only small but its small bits that can be added together and change the way we think about or do something, so its hugely exciting when you see your work being talked about, being used to change things, and working as part as a team doing that is really satisfying. I think that combination of being able to engage in education as well as research, and how you can bring research into the class room or laboratory is what universities are about.

There’s been a few, a silly one is that I had only been here a week or so when I had to call out security to let me back into my accommodation, and they couldn’t get in either so they had to break in through a window! I thoroughly enjoyed being interviewed by Gavin Esler, our Chancellor, as part of our Foundation Day celebrations. It was a really nice way of me being able to share with an audience who I am and them getting to know me a little bit, but it was also nice to feel I was joining this university and sharing my reasons for being in higher education, my reasons for being at the University of Kent, and also my ambitions for the University.

I think there are particular things that strike you like some of the big events we have here, I really enjoy the staff barbeque where everybody comes and enjoys a burger, that’s really nice, where people come together and we are able to say thank you and that includes everybody. The student awards, I wasn’t able to do last year, but my first year here was a really memorable event, partly because it was my first year here and the first time I was able to say well done and thank you to students who were doing fantastic things.

I think stepping up into a new role, in many ways you could have had experiences which prepare you for it, but it doesn’t fully prepare you for what it’s actually like. It’s really that challenge of taking it on a doing it to the best of your ability, and you are constantly reflecting on "how am I doing?", "am I doing this okay?", "what should I be doing differently?", and although I can get feedback and listen to colleagues, at the end of the day you have to respond and react, you can’t just sit back.

So I think a big challenge is adapting to being the Vice Chancellor which is a very public role, and trying to respond to the needs and requests, or demands (quite rightly) of different constituencies. So you have your immediate Executive Group colleagues, you’ve got the Governing Body, you have staff colleagues, students, the wider public and the Government - it's such a fascinating role because you’ve actually got so many different facets. You have lots of evening and weekend events, and representing and being the public face of the university, as well as those really practical things such as thinking "are we financially solvent?" or "are we recruiting?". So I think the biggest challenge is keeping all of that in balance, and looking after myself so that I’m not completely useless and burnt out, and trying to be as effective a leader as possible.

Personally I feel we are in really challenging times at the moment, so one of my ambitions, and I hope I’m achieving it, is to make sure we have a plan and a vision to move us to a place through this difficult and challenging period for higher education. I feel we’ve got a positive vision of where we are trying to get to, we of course have to work to make sure we bring people with us but I think having that plan and responding to that environment is an achievement. Whether it’s a good one or not I don’t know, but I think there’s partly having a plan to see us through this period and also having key strategic projects that keep people excited about what we’re doing, whether it’s the Medical School for example or our signature research teams, our Institute for Cultural Creative Industries, how we organise ourselves to deliver great student experience or a great working experience, so it’s all of those things.

For me it’s very much seeing us through this next phase. I want to see the university through this difficult and challenging period and get us to a place where it feels sustainable, where we feel we are able to deliver the ambitions we have and to do that we need to be financially sustainable. So we need to have the resources coming in which enable us to do the things we want, whether its delivering a fantastic student experience that we want to make even better, ensuring students have access to great career advice and support, or ensuring our staff can develop themselves too so that they can have the careers they want. But also as a university that we are delivering on our ambitions in the research we do, and the role we play in the local community and internationally.

So as I said we are in challenging times at the moment, many universities are, and in effect we’ve got a plan that gets us through this period. It is all about delivering that new university, of course it’s not a completely new university, but a new way of thinking, a new way of operating for our ambitions, for our student experience, our research, the way we engage, our role in local communities, and in order to do all that we have to get through a challenging time.

We also have to bring people with us, so for me that's also something about creating an environment where people feel they understand where we’re going, understand the role that they play and are supported in that role. So we’ve still got work to do around communication and engagement, and we’ve still got work to do around creating that sense of belonging and people feeling that they are a part of the organisation.

I think to go right back where I started, it’s because I believe in education and I believe that it’s an amazing tool to transform people’s lives. Higher education is one element of it, and one of the wonderful things about it is that it’s always there, whether you are 18 or 80 you can still access it. You can do that in a way where you’re exposed to experts, new ways of thinking and fantastic facilities. I think that we shouldn’t have barriers to higher education. It transforms the way you think about things and can transform people’s lives.

Enjoy your time here, because it will fly by, but it’s a really important time in your life so make the most of it. So if you are not enjoying your study, go and speak to someone about it, or if you are struggling then speak to someone about it. If you’re loving it that's fantastic, but then maybe lift your head up a little bit and think about what else you can get involved in, such as societies or volunteering. Little things like, when you go to the library don’t just look for the book you’re meant to get, have a look around as you might find a book that you weren’t expecting which might benefit you. A mentor of mine used to say "know yourself, be yourself, look after yourself", and I would just add to that "enjoy yourself".