Feature: Women count on our University Council

The University Council, Kent’s governing body, has been recognised as a leading example of gender diversity, with its 48% women membership.

The University’s high ranking among the top tier of UK Universities – highlighted in the recent Women Count: Leaders in Higher Education 2016 report – has been welcomed by our Council Chair Sir David Warren.

Sir David says: ‘I am delighted that the University is at the forefront of gender diversity on its governing Council. Diverse institutions are more effective institutions. I am proud to be Chair of a very effective Council in a very high-performing university.’

About the Council

The Council is ‘the supreme governing body of the University’ and its responsibilities include oversight of the management and administration of the University’s revenue and property and conduct of its affairs.

Membership is drawn from a mix of ‘lay members’ who are external to the University, representatives of academic and non-academic staff, students and senior management.

Currently, 12 of the 25 Council members are women, many of them lay members highly regarded for their roles outside the University. They include former head of the Ministry of Justice Dame Ursula Brennan, City lawyer Elaine Colville and portfolio director, investor and adviser Stevie Spring.

All three are vocal in their support for diversity in the Council and across the University. They are also unanimous in their belief that Kent is a special place to be and have clear ideas on the difference they hope to make to the University through their Council role.

Open and outward-facing

Ursula Brennan studied English and American Literature at Kent before joining the Inner London Education Authority and then the Civil Service. After leadership roles in the Department for Work and Pensions, Defra and the Office for Criminal Justice Reform, she became 2nd Permanent Secretary and then the first woman Permanent Secretary at the Ministry of Defence where, with the Chief of Defence Staff, she led a department of nearly 300,000 Service and civilian personnel.

In 2012, Ursula moved to run the Ministry of Justice, with responsibility for running the courts, tribunals and prisons in England and Wales, the administration of legal aid, probation and youth justice, and policy on human rights and data protection. Ursula retired from the Civil Service in 2015.

She believes that ‘Kent is a refreshingly open and outward-facing university; I love the fact that it has built a strong commitment to engaging with Europe. The student body is so much more diverse than it was 50 years ago when the University was founded; I love being part of the continuing challenge of widening the social mix and building academic standards at the same time.’

On the importance of diversity, Ursula says: ‘Universities are about widening horizons, fulfilling potential, encouraging everyone to make the most of their lives. How strange it would be if the Council did not reflect the diversity of the student body – and yes, we do need to do better on BAME membership.’

While a member of Council, she wants to see ‘Kent to grow and prosper; I hope I can use my experience of running large government departments to help the University to build a sustainable future. Non-executive directors have an important role in governance and in challenging the executive, but it must be a partnership. My experience has been that in the best boards (or councils) the executive team feel supported and stretched as well as challenged; that’s the kind of support I hope to give to Dame Julia Goodfellow and her team.’

Special geographical location

After graduating from Kent, Elaine Colville has practised Law in the City of London for many years; specialising in property investment and development advice for pension funds insurance companies and property companies. She is a partner at Shepherd and Wedderburn LLP.

She also has considerable charitable interests, particularly connected with housing, homelessness and world poverty. She has served as a board member of a large London housing association and continues to act as trustee of a grant-making charitable trust.

For Elaine, a key factor in joining the University Council was her ability, as someone actively involved in a professional business in the City, to bring the perspective of the private sector to an institution in the public sector. She says: ‘My day-to-day involvement in property development and institutional investment in property allows me to understand and actively contribute to the decisions on the various infrastructure projects initiated at the University over the last few years, particularly in student residences and funding.’

Elaine believes that ‘the University of Kent is special in its geographical location in relation to Europe and has been successful in attracting a broad base of student and staff both from the UK and abroad.’

She asserts that: ‘Having a diverse group serving on the Council is essential in order to reflect this wide community. Although I imagine this has been difficult to achieve in the case of women, as many potentially suitable  candidates did not have the experience, confidence and time to devote to such voluntary activities, Kent has succeeded in having virtually equal representation on its Council.’

Fundamentally student-centric

Kent Law alumna Stevie Spring has worked in marketing, media, advertising, live entertainment and music promotion, rising to serve as CEO of two international media groups.

She now has a full-time portfolio of jobs which includes: Chairing BBC Children in Need, the ITG Group and Kino-mo, and serving on the main Boards of the Co-op Group and the ALCS (Authors’ Licensing & Collecting Society). She is past president of the Women’s Advertising Club, on the organising committee of the South Bank’s Women of the World Festival, and a Fellow of both the Institute of Practitioners in Advertising and the Marketing Society. In November 2015, she was named in GQ magazine as one of the UK’s 100 most connected women and is on the 2016 Sunday Times List of Britain’s most influential people.

For Stevie, the University of Kent is a special place because ‘it faces Europe and is truly international. Kent campus life is a unique and special experience, juxtaposing modernity with the historic. It’s fundamentally student-centric.’

She joined the Council in 2015 ‘because I wanted to help make sure that others continue to have the opportunity for a fantastically broad education that I was privileged to access… and it seemed right to do that through a University with whom I had direct, positive experience. I believed the breadth of my commercial, public sector and not-for-profit experience would bring a useful perspective to the deliberations of the Council.’

Stevie believes that it is important to have women represented on the University Council ‘because, to quote new Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, it’s 2016!’