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Institutional Context
Summary
Queen Mary University of London is the fourth largest HEI in London with five campuses located from Central to East London, with the largest hubs of activity in Mile End, Whitechapel and Charterhouse Square.
We have over 27,000 students and more than 4,600 members of staff and were ranked fifth in the UK for the quality of research outputs in the REF2014 exercise. Queen Mary has been recognised as the most inclusive Russell Group university and is a co-founder of the UK’s new national Civic University Network. Our strong commitment to knowledge exchange, in partnership with our local and global communities, is echoed in the recent Queen Mary Strategy 2030 (www.qmul.ac.uk/strategy-2030), which aims to “Open the doors of opportunity”.
Institutional context
Queen Mary University of London is one of the largest HEIs in London and a member of the Russell Group, operating from five campuses across London at Mile End, Whitechapel, Charterhouse Square, West Smithfield and Lincoln’s Inn Fields. Queen Mary also operates from international sites including Paris, Malta, Athens and Singapore, with major transnational programmes based in China. With its roots in four historic colleges in London and with a long tradition of commitment to embedding research and scholarly activity in local communities dating back to the foundation of the London Hospital Medical College in 1785 and the People's Palace in 1887. Today Queen Mary is a leading research intensive University with activity organised within our three faculties: Humanities & Social Science; Medicine & Dentistry; Science & Engineering.
We have over 27,000 students and more than 4,600 members of staff. Our students are drawn from over 160 nationalities, with approximately 11% from the EU and 39% from non-EU overseas countries, including over 4,500 students who are based offshore, predominantly in China. Queen Mary has been recognised as the most inclusive Russell Group university in The Times and Sunday Times Good University Guide 2021: “Queen Mary continues to prove that social inclusion and academic success are not mutually exclusive.” Of our London undergraduate students, more than 90% are from state schools; 69% are BAME; 57% are first into higher education; and 27% from families with assessed household income of less than £10k.
Queen Mary was ranked fifth in the UK for the quality of research outputs (i.e. at 3* and 4* level) in the REF2014 exercise. Citation evidence shows that our research is world-leading in a number of areas and we are ranked eighth in the UK and 42nd globally based on citation levels (THE World Rankings). We have a strong track record for research commercialisation, including the spin-outs Apatech, Biomin and Actual Experience, and were recently ranked 4th amongst UK Universities in the Entrepreneurial Impact Ranking 2019 (Octopus Ventures).
A commitment to excellence in knowledge exchange is embedded in Queen Mary Strategy 2030 (www.qmul.ac.uk/strategy-2030), launched in 2019, which aims to ‘Open the doors of opportunity’
with a mission:
‘To create a truly inclusive environment, building on our cherished cultural diversity, where students and staff flourish, reach their full potential and are proud to be part of the University. Dedicated to the public good, we will generate new knowledge, challenge existing knowledge, and engage locally, nationally and internationally to create a better world.’
Queen Mary is a co-founder of the UK’s new national Civic University Network and has a long and distinctive history of supporting its local communities. East London has high levels of deprivation (Tower Hamlets, Newham, Hackney, Barking & Dagenham are all amongst the 10% most deprived local authorities in England) but exceptional potential due to population growth amongst the 12-25 age population, above national average educational attainment and its social and cultural richness and diversity. Our ethos in engaging with our local communities extends to our global activities.
For further information, please send queries to vp-res@qmul.ac.uk
Local Growth and Regeneration
Summary of approach
Queen Mary University of London is one of the largest HEIs in London and a member of the Russell Group of research-intensive Universities, operating from five campuses located from Central to East London. Our strategic local growth and regeneration interventions are primarily focussed on supporting communities in East London with high levels of deprivation.
Our strategic growth and regeneration interventions are aimed at impacting major socio-economic challenges faced by our local communities, including supporting social mobility (e.g. business-led mentoring), addressing the skills needs of local businesses (e.g. Degree Apprenticeships), providing direct support for start-up SMEs (e.g. legal support, consultancy), innovation activities (e.g. technology transfer to local SMEs) and provision of infrastructure/facilities (e.g. QMB Bio-Incubator).
Aspect 1: Strategy
Queen Mary University of London is the fourth largest HEI in London with five campuses located from Central to East London, the largest hubs of activity being in Mile End, Whitechapel and Charterhouse Square.
Queen Mary has a long and distinctive history of supporting its local communities, particularly in East London and is a co-founder of the UK’s new national Civic University Network. This vision is echoed in the recent Queen Mary Strategy 2030 (www.qmul.ac.uk/strategy-2030), which was launched in 2019 and aims to “Open the doors of opportunity” with a strong commitment to supporting the growth and regeneration of our local communities.
Our strategic local growth and regeneration interventions are primarily focussed on communities in East London with high levels of deprivation (Tower Hamlets, Newham, Hackney, Barking & Dagenham are all amongst the 10% most deprived local authorities in England), but with exceptional potential due to population growth amongst the 12-25 age population and above national average educational attainment. Secondary geographic focus is wider London, with some discipline-specific activities aligned with distinct geographic ecosystems, for example alignment of Health-related KE activities with Barts Health Trust and UCL Partners areas, and Creative Industries with the Thames Estuary Production Corridor.
Our knowledge exchange interventions to support local growth are informed by the makeup of our student body, with over half of home students from London, 15% from East London, 57% are first in their families into Higher Education and 27% from families with assessed household income of less than £10k.
Major strategic growth and regeneration interventions aim at unlocking the growth potential and aspirations of our local communities by addressing major socio-economic challenges, including social mobility (e.g. business-led mentoring), the skills needs of local businesses (e.g. Degree Apprenticeships), direct support for start-up SMEs (e.g. legal, consultancy), innovation activities (e.g. technology transfer to local SMEs) and provision of infrastructure/facilities (e.g. QMB Bio-Incubator).
The specific local growth and regeneration needs have been informed through close interaction with relevant governmental and non-governmental bodies to align with the relevant policy context. These include:
Local London Industrial Strategy (under development) – Greater London Authority (GLA); Local Enterprise Partnership for London (LEAP)
GLA – The London Plan 2016, 2019
The Mayor of London’s Economic Development Strategy
London Borough of Tower Hamlets – Growth and Economic Development Plan 2018-23
Knowledge Exchange activities that impact local growth and regeneration are categories as:
Strategic civic interventions – defined as major, discretionary, bespoke intervention backed by place-based strategic intent, responding to local need and typically developed in partnership with other local stakeholders.
Mainstream interventions – ongoing and generic activity that may impact locally but without necessary place-based strategic intent, for example academic consultancy.
In the following sections we provide exemplars from our portfolio of strategic interventions with major impact over the past three years.
Aspect 2: Activity
SOCIAL MOBILITY AND SKILLS NEEDS FOR LOCAL EMPLOYERS
Queen Mary are aware of the challenges some of our University’s students have in obtaining the skills and networks needed to support employability. These issues particularly impact students from local communities with high levels of deprivation who disproportionately want to remain resident in East London following graduation to drive the local economy. Interventions address both supply-side and employer demand-side skills needs:
Degree Apprenticeships: Queen Mary were the first Russell Group University to deliver Degree Apprenticeships in 2015 to match talent to the recognised skills gaps of local employers. We provide a strong offering of programmes in Digital & Technology Solutions and Social Change, in partnership with London-based employers including BBC, Goldman Sachs, IBM and organisations in the charitable sector. Degree apprenticeships offer a distinct approach to learning, particularly attractive to students from our local communities, with 55% of applicants from London and 20% from East London.
qMentoring: A programme that involves provides employer mentoring for students from low-income backgrounds, typically from local communities. Students are matched with a mentor, often a Queen Mary alumnus, with support provided before, during and after the programme benefiting mentee, mentor and employer.
INFRASTRUCTURE AND FACILITIES TO SUPPORT LIFE SCIENCE INNOVATION
Queen Mary Bioenterprises Innovation Centre (QMB - https://www.qmbioenterprises.com): Established in 2010 in Whitechapel with £17M investment from Queen Mary and £7M from the GLA, QMB is the largest bio-incubation space in London providing 3600m2 of premium R&D space for early and late stage Life Sciences start-ups. Over the past three years QMB has been operating at full capacity with tenants including hVivo, Spirogen and ADC Therapeutics. QMB also provides high quality meeting space and access to innovation and technology transfer support provided by the linked Queen Mary Innovation Ltd.
To support further unmet need for additional bio-incubation space (Mayor of London’s Economic Development Strategy) we have established the Queen Mary University Enterprise Zone (QME-https://www.qmenterprisezone.com) in 2019 with £1.5M funding from Research England and matching funding from Queen Mary. QME provides 1500m2 of additional incubation space, available in late 2020, and supports digital health and med-tech start-ups via training/mentoring support and access to pump priming funding.
Cadiovascular Device and Therapeutic Innovation Centre (CVDHub): Established in 2018 and funded by a £2.9M grant from European Regional Development Framework (ERDF) programme, with matching external funding from Barts Charity and Wolfson Foundation, the CVDHub engages SMEs to develop cardiovascular devices and associated innovations. The CVDHub provides a one-stop hub, supporting the £30M Barts Heart Centre clinical research facility. The hub acts as a physical gateway and broker of specialist research and innovation support to London’s SMEs and businesses with leading-edge R&D and innovation expertise provided by Queen Mary and UCL research teams and partners, including business support intermediaries.
DIRECT SUPPORT TO LOCAL BUSINESSES
qLegal and Queen Mary Legal Advice Centre (QMLAC): The award-winning pro bono student law clinic services (http://qlegal.qmul.ac.uk) provides free legal advice and resources to tech start-up companies and entrepreneurs on a range of complex legal issues. These include IP/patents, copyright and trademarks; non-disclosure agreements and employment contracts; business structure and business incorporation, and regulatory advice.
qLegal provides tailored written legal advice and supports public legal education through the delivery of workshops and publication of toolkits on the areas of corporate, commercial, intellectual property and data protection law. These services are provided by QMUL’s postgraduate law students and external London-based lawyers. qLegal also runs a mini-incubator programme in schools in Tower Hamlets; and qLegal students have worked within local start-ups via an externship programme. Funding includes HEIF, the Legal Education Foundation, with significant in-kind contributions from local law firms. Alongside QMLAC, qLegal won the ‘Best Contribution by a Law School’ award in the LawWorks & Attorney General’s Student Pro Bono Awards 2019.
qConsult, qNomics and qInterns: The qConsult partnership between QMUL and J.P. Morgan sees students from low income backgrounds delivering consultancy to small businesses in East London. It adds value to employers while students develop skills and work experience to aid employability. qConsult is run in partnership with City University of London & University of East London and won the Employability Initiative category at The Guardian University Awards 2016. qNomics (http://qnomics.qmul.ac.uk) offers start-ups and entrepreneurs coaching in a range of areas including market strategy, business planning, accounting, funding, and regulatory compliance. The clinics are delivered by students, supported by professional advisers. Our qInterns scheme (https://www.qmul.ac.uk/careers/jobs-and-experience/items/careers-and-enterprise-qinterns.html) supports businesses through the rich stream of talent within our student body, supplying creative ideas and labour for businesses, while providing relevant work experience for the interns.
TARGETED SUPPORT DURING THE COVID-19 PANDEMIC
A range of support interventions to support the local economy have been implemented during the COVID-19 pandemic, including NETWORK (Queen Mary’s Centre for the Creative and Cultural Economy) providing HEIF-funded vouchers for collaborative projects with local businesses to mitigate the significant adverse impact on the creative industries. As part of our Arts & Culture Strategy we have instigated online sessions, in partnership with London Mayor’s Office, Equity and Musicians Union, to share information on support being offered to help the sector survive the coming period.
Aspect 3: Results
INFRASTRUCTURE AND FACILITIES TO SUPPORT LIFE SCIENCE INNOVATION
Over the past 3 years QMB has secured approx. 450 full time high skill jobs in Whitechapel as the incubator is in a mature operational phase and fully occupied. QMB has 9 businesses occupying space as tenants and has supported a total of 195 businesses through its extended operations. QMB is currently expanding its available space for incubation tenants as part of the £3M University Enterprise Zone initiative. New space has already been leased to a multinational genomics sequencing company creating further employment and establishing Whitechapel as a highly competitive location for NHS sequencing contract work. Further space will target Digital Health & MedTech start-ups when it becomes available in late 2020. Queen Mary graduates have been recruited by QMB tenants.
Since its inception in 2018, the CVDHub has engaged with over 60 SMEs, some at the initial diagnostic meeting stage, others already being supported in the design of studies. In addition to engaging with SMEs, the CVDHub also promotes and supports local academics/engineers in developing collaborative projects with clinicians. 18 funding applications have been submitted with the support of the hub.
SOCIAL MOBILITY AND SKILLS NEEDS FOR LOCAL EMPLOYERS
We currently offer over 150 degree apprenticeships a year in Digital & Technology Solutions and Social Change involving 38 employers (including Goldman Sachs, British Airways, BBC, Bart’s Health Trust and Siemens), with 55% of applicants from London and 20% from East London. Student outcomes are exceptional, with 95% continuation rate (compared to 88% for the equivalent traditional degrees) and 95% of the first two graduating cohorts (in 2019 and 2020) attaining a First Class degree.
To support major growth in our degree apprenticeship provision Queen Mary are working with Newham College and employers, including Port of London Authority and Siemens as Anchor Employer partners to deliver an Institute of Technology (IoT); the Department for Education’s (DfE) flagship programme to close the gap in higher technical skills. With £28M funding from the DfE and GLA the IoT will provide a state-of-the art new facility to meet employer skills needs in transport engineering, digital and data science.
The qMentoring programme currently supports 120 students who receive a mentor, with mentors from a wide range of employers including Deloitte, the Civil Service and NASA. In 2018/19 we launched a new strand of qMentoring, prioritising female muslim students following analysis of graduate destination data which revealed that this student cohort underperforms in the job market six months after graduation.
DIRECT SUPPORT TO LOCAL BUSINESSES AND CIVIC SOCIETY
Over the last 3 years, qLegal’s output has included 125 tailored advice letters, 35 workshops and drop-in clinics, and 30 legal toolkits, reaching hundreds of entrepreneurs and SMEs. 68 qLegal students have volunteered to support start-ups via externship and consultancy. Qualitative feedback from clients, partners and students is available in the most recent annual report (http://www.qlegal.qmul.ac.uk/media/qlegal/docs/qLegal-Review-2019.pdf). This forms part of the broader QMLAC work with wider civic society, with 1,219 clients supported through pro bono work since Oct 2016, across a range of legal areas including; landlord/tenant, family law, criminal law, employment law and immigration law. 80% of clients have a London postcode.
qConsult has delivered consultancy to 177 businesses/charities in the past 3 years. Over 1,100 students have taken part since the programme’s inception in 2015 and 93% of the student consultants have used their experience to secure next step employment and gain new skills, supporting organisational productivity and competitiveness. qNomics provide free financial guidance to tech start-up companies and entrepreneurs. In the past 4 years qNomics facilitated 31 start-ups and entrepreneurs’ clinics for 31 UG and 39 PG students. The qIntern programme has supported 329 internships involving 100 businesses over the past 3 years.
In order to expand our knowledge exchange initiatives we have recently established the £1.6M SKETCH programme (Student Knowledge Exchange Through Community Hubs) - a new, student-driven, multi-disciplinary professional services organisation. Building on our qLegal, qNomics and qConsult programmes SKETCH will provide pro bono, social impact-driven consultancy and venture capital services to East London’s start-up and Third Sector community. SKETCH is funded by the Office for Students (£650k), Queen Mary (£243k) and co-investment from partner organisations (£792k).
For further information, please send queries to vp-res@qmul.ac.uk
Public & Community Engagement
Summary of approach
Queen Mary is committed to engaging the world outside of the University in our research and teaching; from communities across the globe to our neighbours in east London – one of the fastest growing and vibrant areas of the capital.
As a sector leader in public engagement, we aim to build on our history by embedding a culture of engagement and social impact across the University.
Queen Mary founded the Centre for Public Engagement in 2012 and was the first university to be awarded the Gold Watermark for public engagement by the NCCPE in 2016.
Dedicated central support enables staff and students to integrate high quality public engagement into their work, to their benefit as well as the world around us.
Aspect 1: Strategy
Our commitment to public engagement is embedded in our Strategy 2030, with a mission to “...generate new knowledge, challenge existing knowledge, and engage locally, nationally and internationally to create a better world.” This strategy was informed by dedicated roundtable events on public and community engagement and prominently features examples of excellent engaged research and teaching, including the internationally acclaimed People’s Palace Projects and the needs-led Legal Advice Centre.
Building on this institutional strategy, public engagement is embedded in strategies across the University, including Arts and Culture and Global Engagement – with plans for public engagement to inform the Research, Enterprise and Impact strategies in development.
Details can be found:
www.qmul.ac.uk/strategy-2030
https://www.qmul.ac.uk/media/qmul/media/downloads/hss/1168_17-Arts-and-Cultural-Strategy.pdf
https://www.qmul.ac.uk/global/global-engagement-strategy/
Since 2012, a dedicated Public Engagement Strategy has supported staff and students to develop engagement projects informed by purpose, engaging the most appropriate audience in high quality and impactful ways. In recognition of this work we were the first university to be awarded the gold Watermark for Public Engagement in 2016. Following the launch of Strategy 2030 in 2019, a new Public Engagement Enabling Plan is now in development, based on consultations with staff, students and external stakeholders – this is due to launch in 2021.
Public engagement is given strategic oversight and leadership at the most senior level by the Vice Principal for Policy and Strategic Partnerships, a key member of the Senior Executive Team (SET). The Vice Principal reports to Queen Mary’s Governance (Council and Senate), champions engagement across the university, ensures resource allocation during institutional planning and supports strategic funding bids.
Engagement strategy is enabled through the Centre for Public Engagement (CPE), a dedicated team based in the Office of the Principal with four full-time permanent staff and an operational budget of £230,000. The CPE was established to create an environment where Queen Mary’s research, teaching and core business can be shaped, shared and conducted with the public as partners. The CPE provides advice and support, reward and recognition, and funding for all staff and students to engage with people outside of the university. The CPE also acts as a critical point of contact between community organisations and the university, facilitating new relationships and partnerships with a view to improving the quality and impact of Queen Mary’s work.
https://www.qmul.ac.uk/publicengagement/
The CPE’s funding panels are guided by the views of patient and community representatives, who sit alongside panel members from across the university. This provides oversight of the CPE’s funding, ensuring engagement activities are relevant and meet internal and external priorities.
The local community is also involved in the development of Queen Mary’s Festival of Communities, an annual celebration of living and learning in Tower Hamlets. The festival acts as a focal point for staff, students, community organisations and local residents, and has been designed in partnership with local organisations. The 2019 festival brought together over 3500 local residents, 52 activities from community organisations and 50 activities featuring Queen Mary staff and students.
https://www.qmul.ac.uk/festival/
More recently, Queen Mary has directly responded to local community needs during COVID-19 – from supplying PPE for hospitals and a local hospice, to the provision of hot meals for families in Tower Hamlets during the school holidays.
Aspect 2: Support
Queen Mary is home to the Centre for Public Engagement (CPE), a dedicated team of four staff working to embed a culture of public engagement. The CPE focusses on removing barriers to engagement by providing advice and support, training, funding and reward and recognition for staff and students at Queen Mary.
Practical support for public engagement includes:
Public engagement funding schemes (up to £81,000 per year) in the form of monthly Small Grants and annual Large Grants support new and existing public, community and patient engagement projects.
Advice Surgeries at our three largest campuses in London. Informal advice sessions ensure staff and students can access expert CPE support for the development of their engagement projects and funding applications.
Training sessions in public engagement and related skills, offered as part of regular staff development courses. Bespoke courses are also developed on request, for example for cohorts of doctoral training centre students, or for whole research collaborations. 327 people received training during 2019/20. In addition, the CPE hosts a regular programme of peer learning seminars for sharing engagement practice.
Reward and recognition through the Engagement and Enterprise Awards and Community Engagement Awards which celebrate public and community engagement. Award winners include the Verbatim Formula: a participatory research project working with care leavers to build confidence through shared testimonials [http://www.theverbatimformula.org.uk/]. Academics can also submit an Engagement narrative as evidence within Queen Mary’s academic promotions process.
Facilitating opportunities by connecting Queen Mary staff and students to external opportunities for public engagement across London, the UK and internationally. For example, a programme of activities is centrally coordinated for Being Human: A Festival of the Humanities. Our 2019 programme was developed in collaboration with Kings’ College London featuring events on Norfolk beaches (discovering early humans), in Walthamstow (refugee storytelling) and at the National Theatre in London (a sensory walk on the secret lives of costumes).
Public and Patient Involvement support in partnership with colleagues in the Research Design Service (RDS) and the Barts Health Engagement and Diffusion team. Monthly funding (up to £500 per project) and training is also provided to support patient involvement activities.
Building and maintaining community relationships through the Community Engagement Officer. They work with a diverse range of community groups, organisations and charities across east London, connecting Queen Mary’s research and teaching to a wealth of knowledge, expertise and opportunities in the fastest growing area of the capital. They advocate for community engagement across Queen Mary, ensuring community stakeholders are involved in key projects (e.g. new building developments) and know how to reach the right people within Queen Mary. https://www.qmul.ac.uk/about/community/
Aspect 3: Activity
We believe that public engagement at Queen Mary should be meaningful and purposeful, designed with the key audience and their needs in mind. We don’t prioritise engagement with one particular audience, but rather seek to balance our engagement across a range of audiences, ensuring that we engage equally with partners who have more social power than us and those who have less, connecting these two groups whenever possible.
We encourage engagement with communities wherever Queen Mary research is having impact. A great deal of engagement focuses on Queen Mary’s place within one of the most creative and diverse areas of London. Major examples include:
The annual Festival of Communities was created collaboratively with east London community groups and organisations to provide an opportunity for the people of Tower Hamlets to explore living and learning in the borough together. The Festival addresses the identified need of ‘community cohesion’, highlighted in conversations with Mile End and Stepney Green community groups. Representatives involved in this consultation have become Festival advisors, to ensure the Festival continually meets the needs of Tower Hamlets. Activities are designed with local families in mind and provide opportunities to meet and interact with new individuals and try new activities such as hands-on experiments, story sharing, demonstrations and creative projects. The Festival provides a unique institution-wide event to bring staff and students together with residents and groups from across east London.
The Centre of the Cell: our flagship science education centre, which was the first to be based within working biomedical research laboratories. The centre aims to inspire the children, young people and families they work with, and has seen over 160,000 participants in the last ten years.
https://www.centreofthecell.org/. The Centre has recently opened the Neuron Pod, a new state-or-the-art learning and community space (https://www.centreofthecell.org/neuron-pod/).
Queen Mary research has global impact, and therefore our engagement happens around the world. Our researchers are working with communities in Cape Verde to conserve local sea turtle populations, with engagement increasing local conservation capacity and securing the attention of local and national authorities. People’s Palace Projects has spent two decades working with communities across Brazil, including those in the national prison system and indigenous people, with projects having lasting impact – from the negotiation of ceasefires between rival drug gangs, to the improvement of degraded environments.
www.peoplespalaceprojects.org.uk
Further details:
https://www.qmul.ac.uk/publicengagement/goodpractice/guides/case-studies
Aspect 4: Results and learning
Queen Mary advocates for and supports high quality evaluation of public engagement, launching the Public Engagement Evaluation Toolkit in 2018 – a resource developed in partnership with Fast Track Impact, the National Co-ordinating Centre for Public Engagement and Dialogue Matters.
The toolkit provides a suite of tools to plan and integrate evaluation and monitoring into a public engagement activity – for example, ensuring evaluation fits the scope and scale of the project, and advising methods in keeping with the activity itself. This toolkit provides a high-quality starting point for all those leading public engagement at Queen Mary to build their evaluation from. It is available online and has been widely shared within the public engagement sector at national conferences and is used as a resource by staff at other UK universities.
https://www.qmul.ac.uk/publicengagement/goodpractice/evaluation-toolkit/
Individuals leading public engagement are encouraged and supported by the CPE and the Impact team to develop their own evaluation plans, and all projects funded by the Public Engagement Grant Schemes at Queen Mary are required to submit details of evaluation plans when applying for funding. Throughout the project, the CPE provides advice, guidance and training on project evaluation. Project leads are invited to reflect on and share their learning through the CPE’s website, a central repository for engagement stories across the institution.
Examples include projects engaging with east London residents to explore experiences of bilingualism, through to New Orleans residents to map their city:
https://www.qmul.ac.uk/publicengagement/blog/2018-blog-posts/items/languages-in-our-lives.html
https://www.qmul.ac.uk/publicengagement/blog/2018-blog-posts/items/remapping-our-borders-workshop-.html
Evaluation of the Festival of Communities is carried out by the CPE. Feedback and data are collected from exhibitors and visitors via a trained PhD student evaluation team which is used to inform organisational, marketing and content decisions for future years.
To further improve Queen Mary’s approach to engagement evaluation, we plan to assess the impact of long-term engagement projects and share results of engagement projects more widely.
Aspect 5: Acting on results
Queen Mary has sought to externally evaluate its support for public engagement, and in turn improve its approach, through the National Coordinating Centre for Public Engagement (NCCPE) Watermark process, which assesses the strengths and weaknesses of the university’s engagement infrastructure.
In response to feedback obtained from our 2016 assessment, we strengthened our reward and recognition for public engagement, our public engagement training offer. New training courses and content was introduced, and annual training numbers have doubled since 2016.
https://www.qmul.ac.uk/publicengagement/goodpractice/training/
Our annual Engagement and Enterprise Awards now recognise and celebrate projects and individuals in public engagement, media relations, student enterprise, and academic enterprise. We also strengthened the language around public engagement in the university’s academic promotions criteria and introduced public engagement as an area of contribution in our Professorial Review criteria. In the 2019/20 Academic Promotions round, 60% of the applicants submitted an ‘Engagement with Society/Impact’ narrative, and 67% of those were successful.
Internally, Queen Mary’s engagement is reviewed by the Vice Principal for Policy and Strategic Partnerships, reporting to the university’s Senior Executive Team, Council, and Senate. While the CPE holds a planning dashboard for the central programme of support, the CPE also reports on the number of staff and students attending public engagement training as part of the University’s HEIF strategy KPIs. 338 people attended training run by the CPE in 2018/19, exceeding the target of 207. This represents a significant increase in the uptake of public engagement training, with numbers growing year on year.
We also make improvements in response to internal feedback. For example, based on feedback from researchers, we introduced a new Public and Patient Involvement Small Grant Scheme in 2017 to enable academics to kick-start new relationships ahead of larger research and engagement grants.
In 2020 we are undertaking a review of our public engagement strategy, alongside renewal of our Engage Watermark. Building on our Vision for Public Engagement, we have gathered insight from over 40 internal and external stakeholders to shape a draft enabling plan, which will be developed and refined in a series of workshops during the 2020/21 academic year.
For further information, please send queries to publicengagement@qmul.ac.uk