We went to interview Susan Ponsford, Faculty Academic Registrar, Student and Academic Administration – Medicine to find out what her job involves and what her average day consists of.
A description of Susan’s job:
The responsibilities of my role are broad and varied. I am responsible for managing the SAA team in the Faculty of Medicine and in turn they ensure the smooth running of recruitment and admissions, student administration, placements and timetabling, curriculum and quality assurance, assessments, and support for the graduate school who look after Postgraduate Research programmes. I work with an excellent team of 30 people who are based across two campuses and we work very closely with academic colleagues and colleagues in NHS Trusts.
Like many peoples’ jobs, my role is never the same from one day to the next so it is difficult to describe a typical day, there is no such thing- however below gives a flavour of the work I do.
07.30 – I arrive in work after a one hour journey from Christchurch. Getting to work early means that I usually have an hour, while it is quiet, to check through my emails, checking back through messages from previous days that need my attention quickly. Although I might have a plan for the day this is often thrown out of the window by something quite unexpected which needs an urgent response.
09.00 – my morning is often taken up with meetings, possibly with colleagues from other parts of the SAA workstream, Faculty meetings or one to one meetings with members of my team. The work that is undertaken by myself and my team changes depending on the time of the year and where we are in the Student lifecycle. Currently, our major focus is on assessment and Quality Assurance as well as the ongoing support for our students and their programmes of study.
12.30 – lunchtime, I tend not to stop for lunch – I usually bring in a sandwich or some food from home and eat on the go.
13.30 – My afternoon again is quite likely to be made up of further meetings, quite often I have to travel between the main Highfield Campus and our site at Southampton General Hospital.
15.30 – if I am out of the office, I may go to General Medical Council events, where I meet people in similar roles to me in other institutions to learn best practice and to find out if we are all facing the same challenges – which we usually are!
17.30 – If possible I leave work and head home.
Evening – I live ten minutes from the sea, so every evening I take my dog (a boxer) for a walk before something to eat and bed.
To get in touch with the SAA team in the Faculty of Medicine contact studentoffice.fm@soton.ac.uk