This week Mona’s guest is Colm Harmon, Professor of Applied Economics and Vice-Principal Students.
Mona Siddiqui: Can you tell us a little bit about your work as Vice Principal Students?
Colm Harmon: Well it’s a very broad brief and in coming to this I was thinking one of my regrets ought to be taking on Vice Principal Students just before a pandemic! But what is exciting about the job for me is I think that colleagues across the University see students as things to be proud of and things to work hard to help succeed. In many ways I think the brief from the University to me is very much in that vein. I cover everything from how we attract our students to the University, through to passing them off as our future alumni and pretty much everything in between so big role, exciting role, but one that’s very focused on success for one of our key elements and that’s our students.
MS: Is there any one distinct aspect of the kind of students, both undergraduate and postgraduate, who choose to come to Edinburgh?
CH: In my experience so far there’s an incredible depth of commitment from our students. They’re clearly high achieving students, but what I feel about the Edinburgh student is that they have this deep commitment to their disciplinary training, and that’s what drives them here, but they also have a deep curiosity to think outside of that.
In many ways now in the modern university environment, our challenge is to nurture and foster that and make it as easy as possible so to deliver that disciplinary excellence that they strive for but also to latch onto that unique curiosity that I think is a hallmark of an Edinburgh student.
MS: And over the last year and a half almost there must have been so many challenges but in your own experience with the students here what has been the one thing that has been the biggest challenge?
CH: It’s the welfare that’s been the toughest and the thing that I certainly underestimated was just how – but of course it’s nice to hear it in a perverse sort of way – is just how powerful community is.
What the students lost was this very normal rhythm of life at the University, even a simple example was that first years in halls can get up in the morning, they may not necessarily get on with the people they live with but they get up in the morning, they leave, they forge the relationships with their classmates and they spend time there and then they come back in the evening to sleep, instead they were kept in these artificially constructed bubbles and it proved to us that you can’t artificially construct friendship, they have to form them naturally. This year ripped that ability from the students and that’s my biggest observation I think of this year.
MS: So looking back to either your recent or distant past, is there something that you have regretted?
CH: I’ve enjoyed thinking about this question. As with the Principal, and as with a surprising number of our colleagues, I suspect, if we asked, I come from a first in family kind of background in terms of university and indeed a first in generation – I was youngest in my generation and the only one to go on to college from Dublin.
In thinking about this question, it was the fact that I took such a long time to find my groove and recognise my legitimacy in being what I was at the time, in getting in to university and getting a PhD and my first academic role. My first mentor said to me it was essential to be comfortable in your own skin or mind as to what you are and I didn’t figure that out for a very long time. Therefore, there were no trade offs. I worked at 150 miles an hour at everything and perhaps at the expense of personal and professional elements and I think that regret is in not responding to that sooner.
On one level, I think there was almost a feeling that if you responded there was a fear of being found out, that I was some sort of imposter, and at least with tunnel vision where work and a sense of success is at the expense of life and actually of actually enjoying the achievement.
What it taught me, which I think draws into my work both as a researcher but also as an institutional leader, is that you don’t escape background easily. Whatever success you have it’s literally hard to escape. We know the challenges students have in accessing university and it’s why widening participation and diversity at the university is important but it goes beyond that and it’s more than some cliché about carrying a chip on your shoulder. You don’t, in fact, understand success and you worry about pleasing others, and I think sometimes therefore you burn too hard, and that’s something I do regret, not reacting and responding to earlier.
MS: And what’s your one hope that you carry forward?
CH: I think it would be remiss not to think about the institutional elements here. I do think that despite the maelstrom, that we’re facing forwards, we’re engaging more, and I think Edinburgh is turning to being more positive, with collective efforts towards a new future, so that part fills me with a lot of hope and excitement.
More personally, my hope is that we can take the reality of our standing in the world, and bring that ambition to everything we do. Sort of responding, in a sense, to the regret is about owning your ambition and being comfortable with it and I think I as an individual, but I also hope for the institution, that we can own that ambition and reflect that we are a superb place with a superb reputation and we need to harness that ambition in our education model. What should an institution of this standing be doing to shape the model of how education is delivered in a top thirty global institution?
As an employer can we offer that ambition and percolate it through to our colleagues and as an influencer of debate can we continue to grow that sort of power of convening that we have and use it towards a very positive, collective, outcome.
In short, I guess my hope for me but also for Edinburgh is that renewal means owning that soft power that we have and linking together all of our activity and demands towards the goals that an institution as prominent as Edinburgh should have.