By Cameron Bailie
LSE’s senior leadership gathered on 9 October in the Shaw Library to introduce themselves to the student body. It was presented as an opportunity to meet a selection of the leadership and “get to know” them, and one another, with an emphasis on the event’s interactivity and informality.
The agenda consisted of brief speeches before over an hour of student-staff mixing. While many members of the senior leadership team were present, only Eric Neumayer (Interim Vice Chancellor) and Emma McCoy (Vice President and Pro Vice Chancellor) spoke to the crowd. Larry Kramer, who will be assuming the role of President and Vice Chancellor in April 2024, was not present.
Neumayer began with an expression of concern for events that took place over the weekend in “Israel and Gaza,” foregrounding LSE’s principal aim to support anybody affected.
McCoy’s speech acknowledged challenges faced by the leadership. She spoke of LSE’s recent silver Teaching Excellence Framework score, which she commended as an improvement on the previous bronze rating in 2017. She continued, saying that the gold score for student outcomes shows how students do “incredibly well because of their time at LSE,” but there remains a “long way to go.”
The silver score, she reiterated upon questioning, would be improved by “consistency across the school” in “going for gold.”
“Community and general wellbeing” require a “whole-school approach”, McCoy continued, since it is “the responsibility of all [the staff] to make sure that [students] have a great time here” at LSE.
McCoy and Chris Adewoye, LSESU Activities and Communities Officer, were asked for comment on the greatest challenges facing the leadership bodies. They agreed that bringing student representatives into the fold was very important, where there has historically been a divergence between the student and staff leadership teams.
Since sabbatical officers change each year, leaders agreed that cooperation is needed to overcome short-termism and engage lasting projects with “institutional memory”. Adewoye hopes to show people what they can achieve within the large university community, lead by example, and encourage the exploring of different communities at LSE. McCoy wants to embrace the diversity of views within the School by allowing people to feel their “whole selves”, in part through the fostering of “principal spaces” and a sense of “social safety”.
A written feedback box was available for any comments not made directly to staff members.
