Rachel Reeds, HE Professional and Author (Episode 60) | Rachel relishes being a positive disruptor in higher education

For this episode of the Research Adjacent podcast Sarah is talking to Rachel Reeds. Rachel is the author of Surviving and Thriving in Higher Education Professional Services, founder of The Bold Collective, and Senior Admissions Manager at Anglia Ruskin University.
Surviving and Thriving in Higher Education
Rachel has been working in higher education since 2011. She has worked in a variety of roles, including course administration, quality assurance, and admissions. She particularly enjoys working in smaller institutions which are committed to widening participation.
“There is something very directly impactful about the work that you do in admissions, where you can see that one conversation can absolutely adjust the trajectory of somebody’s life.”
Invisible By Design
Having seen university life from a number of different perspectives Rachel became increasingly frustrated at the inequality and artificial divide between academic and ‘non-academic’ roles.
“When you’re already defined by a negative and by not being part of something that’s really quite an outsider space to come from. It doesn’t really empower people in that space to to speak up and speak with confidence. And then there’s the freedoms they have enshrined in their contracts. Academic freedom is enshrined in a contract, whereas I need to please keep quiet and carry on. Thank you. No opinions required.”
Beyond the contractual differences, there is also the fact that, when done well, professional roles are invisible. A stark contrast to highly visible academic labour.
“Our roles are very much designed to be invisible. If we do a good job in professional roles, no one sees the work. If you do a small error, it becomes a giant drama.”
These roles are not just defined by invisible labour, but are also invisible in sector-wide statistics as there is no obligation for universities to report staff numbers.
“Since 2019 it’s not been mandatory to return the numbers of people on non-academic contracts to HESA, the Higher Education Statistics Agency, which is THE data capture mechanism for higher education. So you literally don’t exist, because if you’re not counted.”
Positive Disruption
As a self-confessed positive disruptor, Rachel channeled her frustrations into a book which both raised the profile of HE professionals and provided a guide to navigate these choppy waters. Her book Surviving and Thriving in Higher Education Professional Services was released in December 2024.
“I’m proud of the book, not for it in and of itself, but for what it represents, for the journey. So much knowledge in higher education, particularly in professional services, and it is just not handed on, because there are no or very limited mechanisms to do so.”
With the book comes an appeal to higher education professionals to be more proactive – whether that is about managing their own careers or changing things for the better.
“It is true that we, professional services, quietly amongst ourselves, are frustrated, but don’t always speak up. And my call to action at the end of the book is very much a speak up, speak out, because we don’t do it enough.”
Find out more
- Connect with Rachel on LinkedIn or via her website
- Read Rachel’s book Surviving and Thriving in Higher Education Professional Services
- Join one of Rachel’s monthly workshops
Theme music by Lemon Music Studios from Pixabay
Episode Transcript
Rachel Reeds 00:00
Our roles are very much designed to be invisible. If we do a good job in professional roles, no one sees the work. If you do a small error, it becomes a giant drama. You literally are invisible. Because since 2019 it’s not been mandatory to return the numbers of people on non-academic contracts to the HESA Higher Education Statistics Agency, which is the datacapture mechanism for higher education. Professional services quietly amongst ourselves are frustrated, but don’t always speak up. And my call to action at the end of the book is very much a speak up, speak out, because we don’t do it enough.
Sarah McLusky 00:41
Hello there. I’m Sarah McLusky, and this is Research Adjacent. Each episode, I talk to amazing research adjacent professionals about what they do and why it makes a difference. Keep listening to find out why we think the research adjacent space is where the real magic happens.
Sarah McLusky 01:03
Hello and welcome to episode 60 of Research Adjacent. Today my guest is Rachel Reeds. Rachel is slightly different to my usual guest, because although she has been research-adjacent in the past, strictly speaking, she’s not research-adjacent now. But what Rachel does know a lot about are the challenges facing professionals, including research-adjacent ones, working in higher education. Describing herself as a positive disruptor, Rachel has recently published a book called Surviving and Thriving in Higher Education Professional Services. The book draws both on her own career, working mainly in university admissions, and interviews with other HE professionals in a wide variety of roles. In our conversation, we talk a lot about the disparities between academic and professional contracts, why professional roles are invisible by design, and why she wants to embolden us all to speak out more. We also talk about why Rachel is drawn towards work which supports the underdog and works to change the system from within. As well as the book, Rachel is developing a range of support for higher education professionals, including free monthly workshops if you’re listening to this episode, when it comes out, the next workshop is going to be on this Friday, which is the 17th of January, 2025 so check the link in the show notes for details, and even if you’ve missed that one, as I say, she’s doing the monthly so hopefully there will be another one coming up very soon. Before we get on to Rachel’s story I want to remind you to sign up for the Research Adjacent newsletter. Every fortnight, I send subscribers my top takeaways from the most recent podcast episode. They are insights that you won’t find anywhere else. So if you want to know my thoughts about this episode, then make sure that you’re subscribed by Monday the 20th of January. If you’re listening in a podcast app, you’ll find the link in the show notes. And if you’re listening on the website, then scroll down to the bottom of the web page for the sign up form. But for now, let’s get back to the episode. Listen on to hear Rachel’s story.
Sarah McLusky 03:00
Welcome along to the podcast, Rachel, thank you so much for joining us. I wonder if you could tell our listeners a little bit about what it is that you do. Well,
Rachel Reeds 03:09
Thanks for having me. So I have been surviving and thriving in higher education professional services since 2011 and I came out of university and decided I want to work in the public sector. That was about as deep as my thinking got. So I started working in local government, and the politics was a bit too much for me. After a while, my politics did not align with the political party that was in, that dominated in this rural district council. So that’s when I moved into higher education, and I have spent wonderful number of years now moving across different elements of the student journey, quality assurance. I’ve worked in research administration, taught course administration, and then laterally in admissions. And that journey has taught me a lot about some of the challenges of working in higher education as a professional and some of the disparities between academics and professionals, which led me in my frustration about the lack of development opportunities and training and empowerment of professional staff, who can feel very marginalized and quiet when our roles are very much designed to be invisible. If we do a good job in professional roles, no, no-one sees the work. If you do a small error, it becomes a giant drama. So that led me to write my book, which is also called Surviving and Thriving in Higher Education Professional Services, which came out this week.
Sarah McLusky 04:33
Yeah it’s fantastic. It’s a really exciting week to have you on the podcast, although, by the time this goes out, it will be, you know, slightly
Sarah McLusky 04:40
slightly in the past, but but still, people can still go and find the book and read it. And certainly it is, it is the book, hearing about the book that that led me to you. So you’re not a typical guest we would have on Research Adjacent in the sense that at the moment, although you have previously worked alongside research students, you don’t currently work in a research-adjacent role, but but certainly very familiar with this whole higher education professional services landscape, having moved around some different roles there. So you mentioned there briefly some of the different roles that you’ve had. Maybe you could tell us a little bit more about what you do now and what some of the other things that you’ve done over your career
Rachel Reeds 04:40
I realized that
Rachel Reeds 05:24
Of course. So currently, I work in admissions. I lead a home admissions function. It’s not really home admissions – it’s everyone who doesn’t need a visa – admissions department. So CPD, degree, apprenticeships, further education, undergraduate taught, post graduate taught, I don’t currently have research admissions because that’s such a specialist area that usually sits within the research graduate school or somewhere similar. I like working in admissions most particularly because you are at the start of the student journey. You are the gatekeepers and also the facilitators of bringing people into higher education and opening up opportunities. And I’ve always worked in new universities, post-92 universities as we call them. So for me, that’s a very important part of my professional identity, is that I work in institutions that have central to their ethos widening participation and broadening access to higher education. So there’s something very powerful to me about making sure that I’m part of the mechanisms and the processes and the environment that can enable people who probably spent a lot of their life thinking that university wasn’t for them or that they couldn’t necessarily achieve if they were in that space, that it wouldn’t be suited to them culturally. So being in a position to break some of those barriers, for me is very powerful place to be. I enjoy all different parts of working on the student journey, but there is something very directly impactful about the work that you do in admissions where you can see that one conversation can absolutely adjust the trajectory of somebody’s life, someone who thought there was a barrier that you can then help them dismantle is, yeah, it’s really powerful. But I started in quality assurance with the structures of course approvals and and the academic side of things. So having experience in course approvals and course structures, in a business school, there’s lots of academics who are very good at the theory and not so good at the accounting. Academics never could make their credit add up to 100, which was a bit frustrating, and going from that to then taught course administration. So the middle of the journey means that I come at all of the work I do in higher education in a more holistic way, thinking about how the different bits fit together. Particularly when I worked in the research graduate school, that was enlightening, because it’s such a transitional space between academic and the professional, and you have to float across it. It’s, you know, that some of the Celia Whitchurch’s concepts about third space, this space between and among and in both spaces at once simultaneously, which I really felt when I worked in that space. But I also still think it, I think it permit permeates higher education altogether, you, you know, and that those who work in the research space have to transition across those boundaries and across those chasms.
Sarah McLusky 05:24
Yeah and they do feel like chasms, yes. Sometimes, depending on the situation that you’re in
Rachel Reeds 08:30
They do, because for all that we talk about, breaking down barriers and third space working and transitions between spaces, ultimately, there is an absolute binary in higher education and in the academic world that says you are either an academic or you are not an academic. And that’s absolutely enshrined in the contractual differences. And I don’t know that in any other industry or space, do you have such a binary contrast? Most contracts in the in the private sector space are focused around, you know, task, output, responsibilities, expectations and role, whereas you are either in the teaching, learning, research box or you’re not. And it’s very strange to work in a space, and I imagine you probably have this in the health service too, where you’re define, defined by what you are not, so you’re non-academic, or you’re non-clinical, or anything like that. So and it’s when you’re already defined by a negative and by a by exception or by not being part of something that’s really quite a negative or outside space to come from. So it doesn’t really empower people in that space to to speak up and speak with confidence. And then there’s that primacy that comes from that academic space and the freedoms they have enshrined in their contracts. Academic freedom is enshrined in a contract, whereas my professional contract says I need to please keep quiet and carry on. Thank you. No opinions required.
Sarah McLusky 09:52
There’s definitely things there I want to pick up on. So just that, well, let’s, let’s just go with that first one about some of the differences in the contracts between, because that’s something that you talk a bit about in your book, the differences between. It’s, it’s everything from the expectations to the actual, you know, terms and conditions of employment. Tell us a bit more about some of those disparities. For those who are not aware.
Rachel Reeds 10:22
The fundamental distinction is around this, what starts with this concept of academic freedom. So in a in an academic, in a teaching, learning or pure research contract for an academic role, there is an enshrined protection for of freedom of speech, which goes beyond the traditional concepts of freedom of speech and into the realm of academic freedom, where they are in a space where they are encouraged to and empowered to challenge, and they can speak to both challenge in terms of their subject and their particular area of research, but also think some of those institutional structures within which they’re operating, they can speak more comfortably. They have an enshrined expectation that they will enter into contract with other organizations, so they will be an external examiner, for example, at another institution, or they will do a consultancy project, or they will be part of a research project. And that’s encouraged actively and seen as a real strength from their work, and it really betters their work to be part of those other things, and there is very minimal understanding, or total lack of reference, to any kind of potential commercial conflict of interest that might bring. So there’ll be, there’ll be consideration of the ethical implications and those kinds of conflicts of interest. But there is no concern that an academic might go and tell someone another institution about I don’t know our like offer-making a strategy or something, but for professional staff, we are contractually tied to that one employer. Our contracts usually say that we’re not allowed to enter into contract with anyone else. So I was in breach of my contract by entering into contract with Routledge to publish my book. But, you know, that’s a very small example of it, but that’s the that is, technically what happened. And also, there is no expectation or no space for any teaching, learning or research work on a professional services contract, which is ridiculous when you consider that an academic librarian is on a professional contract, and they are quite actively straddling those two spaces. Or when you consider someone who might teach academic skills, they’re not an academic, because an academic is a very conceptual space to be in, because it is, it’s about teaching and learning, but it’s not just teaching and learning. It’s a specific kind of teaching and learning and a specific framework around which, within which teaching and learning should be done that’s different from academic skills or the work librarians in particular do, or researcher development training that can often can be done by academic staff, but it also can be done by professional staff, and yet it’s sits directly within, you know, one space.
Sarah McLusky 13:05
Yeah it starts to fall apart. There’s so many roles. As you say, research librarians being one of them. I used to be in a fairly strategic role in a research institute as a manager, helping to direct the research and make decisions about what funding applications were put in. So again, it’s that idea of of falling through the cracks between what’s considered professional services and what’s considered academia, and the more you pick at it, the less it makes sense.
Rachel Reeds 13:38
Yeah, absolutely. And I have colleagues. There’s a colleague represented in the book, one of the 11 contributors, who shared their stories and their journeys through higher education with me for the book, Dr Joanne Caldwell, who has published work around professional services identity. That’s what she did her doctorate focus on and she grapples, and she talks openly about grappling with people constantly asking her when she’s going to transition to the academic space, because it’s seen as an elevated space that, of course, she must want to move into, which she doesn’t. But simultaneously, she works in a in a in a business school that are willing to support her research interests, but contractually can’t give her time to do that, because there is no space in a professional contract for research because it’s not seen as something that professional staff would do. And yet, you have people working in partnership, academic staff and professional staff. And if we want to engage in research or write, like I did all of my book on my own time, that’s what we have to do. The MA education course leader might say, I’d really like to hear from senior professional staff for helping, you know, do a webinar or a seminar, sorry, for students on MA education practice. We can do it on our own time.
Sarah McLusky 14:57
Yeah
Rachel Reeds 14:58
We might get a release from our time. to do it. But we also, if you were a staff member that maybe wasn’t earning a salary at a lecturer level, you’ve got, they can’t pay you for the work at that level. So there’s a, I don’t know, lack of recognition of of that knowledge as well.
Sarah McLusky 15:14
Yeah. And also it’s, it’s sometimes I frustrate myself because I’m like, sometimes we don’t necessarily have to play by the same rules. But if you look at the academic model in the sense of how you advance subject area, is that you do research on it, and you publish on that research, and there are aspects of the work that is classed as professional services. So for example, some of the ones I think of particularly, are things like public engagement and researcher development, where people are being encouraged to do research and publish on that topic, you know, on do research, on public engagement and what’s best practice, and talking about that, but still being considered professional services. And and it’s this, it’s it’s like a bind that that just stifles some of that progress.
Rachel Reeds 16:08
It stifles progress innovation, and is inherently discomforting to be working in a teaching, learning and research institution, and that be for the students, but not for us. Yeah. And accessing that is quite challenging. But then on the flip side, it must be very, very frustrating working in a higher education setting, working in something like marketing or for example, and not being able to influence or contribute to the institutional marketing strategies and plans and success. So there is a weird disconnect. Yeah, it’s quite an uncomfortable space to be in. And just, you know, by publishing this book from for me, there are people that are, I mean, a lot of professional services community are like, Ah, this is amazing. We are we feel unheard, we feel unseen. And they but they haven’t been able to rationalize or understand necessarily why they feel that way. So it’s giving a framework, but also giving them the information data that backs it up. So when I explain to professional staff that you literally are invisible, because since 2019 it’s not been mandatory to return the numbers of people on non-academic contracts to the HESA Higher Education Statistics Agency, which is the, the data capture mechanism for higher education. So you literally don’t exist, because if you’re not counted, you don’t feature in the research. And so when you see something like Advance HE last week or so published some work around progression. I think it was about the gender pay gap and thinking about women progressing in higher education. And they unfortunately fell into that trap of talking about the data says that in higher education. And I had to say, I went back to them and said, I think you’ve missed the word academic out a few times here, because you can’t make these generalizations, because some institutions do return data on their people who aren’t on academic contracts, but they’re going to distort the picture, because unfortunately the 97 or so institutions that don’t bother you know, what does that say about them as an institution, that they’re not doing it and are the ones that contribute it are? They’re probably just carrying on with what they did before, and it’s sort of straightforward to do so, but when you’re not in the data, you literally don’t exist in the research. Then how can people do research and analysis when there is no data about the the other half?
Sarah McLusky 18:31
And that’s an astonishing statistic. I remember seeing you posting about it on on LinkedIn a couple of months ago. I think it was and I didn’t quite believe it, and I went away and checked.
Rachel Reeds 18:42
You have to check
Sarah McLusky 18:43
because I didn’t quite believe it, and it’s absolutely remarkable. But as you say, not only I mean, part of why I started doing this podcast was because I read, I’m sure I’ve talked about it before, but I read a new strategy from UKRI, which talked about public engagement, and it talked about the academics, and it talked about the communities that they wanted to work with. At no point in the entire document did it reference the people who would be in the middle, who would actually be doing the work of pulling all of this strategy together and actually delivering on this strategy. And so the fact that people were invisible, even in a document which was about their job, I found absolutely astonishing. And I think you said to me when we were talking beforehand, that it’s almost like being invisible. If you’re good at your job, that’s invisible and that’s quite it’s, it’s frustrating. It makes a lot of sense to me
Rachel Reeds 19:53
Yeah, so professionals roles generally, are invisible by design. So they are because of this traditional concept of them as sort of support roles, especially when you’re thinking about the very traditional professional services role. So for example, course administration, looking after enrolled students, data and processing their results and exam boards and everything. It’s silent. You know, no one as a student has any idea that someone is like doing that work. They don’t know really about exam boards and who’s writing minutes and things like that. No one thinks about that kind of thing, and all of the process that go through to get a course approved or to design some teaching and learning. What they see is the face. They see the lecturer. They see the materials. They see the output at the end of it. So when an academic is doing their job really, really well, it’s visible because there’s output, there’s there’s there’s things in the REF, they’ve got good NSS scores, that’s the National Student Survey about, you know, how good your course is and how good your university is. They’re getting good unit, module, you know, output, things like that. They’re getting good grades. They’re getting lots of first class and second, two one degrees coming out the end. If you do your job perfectly in course administration, everyone gets their grades processed on time. Everything hits the deadlines. There are no mistakes. There are no errors. Everyone thinks it just happens by magic, and yet, when it goes wrong, it becomes this big, big drama, and it’s and it’s often not resourced, because it’s not recognized, because it’s done so quietly and so well that therefore it’s easy to overlook it. The analogy someone came up with shared with me a couple weeks ago is you have to think of it like plankton, utterly foundational and fundamental to the ecosystem of the of the environment, but because you can’t see it, you might not think it’s there or that you need it. Yeah, and that’s sometimes what it can be – professional services plankton,
Sarah McLusky 21:40
I’m not sure, I’m not sure people will want to be compared to plankton
Rachel Reeds 21:44
Well it’s fundamental, but it’s really important, because I think sometimes there’s dialog, particularly in the press, particularly in the sort of like Times Higher Education space, or in Government speak, where, where there’s this weird concept that universities in that abstract concept and could exist if you took away all this, you know, managerialisation is the death of HE. But let’s be blunt, if you took all the academics out of an institution, or everyone on academic contract, between everyone who’s on a professional contract, who actually does do teaching and learning, between all the knowledge that we have across the board, we probably get manage all right? We could probably rustle up quite a few courses between us. We could cover subject knowledge. We could, there’s lots of research going on, there’s lots of academic writing going on, there’s output there. We could probably muddle along for a while, okay? If you took an institution, took all the professional services staff out, it would all collapse. Yeah, who would they ring if there was audio visual emergency, who, who was going to build the learning, the virtual learning environment, who’s going to populate things, who’s going to process the result? It would just all collapse. So it really is symbiotic relationship, and that’s just totally not acknowledged to the degree it should be.
Sarah McLusky 22:58
I think a lot of people as well talk about as being like, like the glue. And you know, when glue dries, it dries clear. You know, you don’t want to see glue. You don’t want glue oozing down the edge of something. I want it to be invisible, but it’s there holding everything together. And, yeah, I think you’re absolutely right. I’ve certainly been in places where a really key member of staff has has moved on to a new opportunity, and suddenly it’s like, oh, what do we do? Who knows how to do all this stuff?
Sarah McLusky 23:31
Are you listening to this podcast for career inspiration? Even though research-adjacent roles are pretty niche there are still so many different paths that you could take. For a bit of a nudge in the right direction try the research-adjacent careers quiz at researchadjacent.com/quiz. Based on your strengths and interests, it will suggest a job category to explore further with some recommendations for podcast episodes from the Research Adjacent back catalogue to give you some more inspiration. Complete the quiz at research adjacent.com or click the link in the show notes.
Sarah McLusky 24:01
I think though, from hearing you talk, and then even just from the career choices that you’ve made, I get the impression you’re somebody who likes to challenge things, perhaps.
Rachel Reeds 24:13
Oh yes, I like to be a positive disruptor. That’s what I call it. Yes. I mean, I have done that right from the start of my career, in some ways. Going back a little bit in my career. I so I went to a small, independent, all girls school, very white and middle class in kind of a medium sized town in the the East Anglia. I went to, I did history at York, traditional choice of subject for a traditional kind of university, lovely city to do medieval history in, but again, quite small in terms of the grand scheme of cities and towns and the campus university. Quite lots of people who were quite like me, but with more accents, because I was up north, lots of beautiful accents and and then I worked in a rural council in East Northamptonshire District Council. So it was very sort of samey. Everyone was quite similar. And then I, when I started working in higher education, I worked at the University of Bedfordshire in Luton, and it’s quite sad in a way, I suppose, but at the age of 24 I suddenly realized I did not understand how the world worked, and that actually things I understood like and believed in, like a meritocracy, for example, if you just work hard, you’ll get somewhere. I just suddenly thought this, this doesn’t mesh with what I’m seeing. I’m seeing profiling of students based on race and ethnicity. I’m seeing profiling of staff. And see I mean, and this is back in the days before the UKVI audit, when the international recruitment was king, and no one followed any rules, because no one was keeping check on it. And so I then start. I studied my masters, part time at Birkbeck College, because it was the only place I could do Twilight teaching, and I really wanted the classroom based experience. And I did a Masters in culture, ethnicity and diaspora, and it was my unlearning moment. So for me, it that masters that journey those two years, and that starting to work in Luton was the opening up of my eyes as to how dysfunctional the world is and how but also, on the same hand, how government and establishment and certain things can just carry on, oblivious to how dysfunctional the world is and community is and how disadvantaged some groups are. So what went into being, I want to do something in public service with that really galvanized me, and it made me think I don’t want I want to be part of the change, part of the positivity, not perpetuating it. So I feel very strongly about my values working in higher education, that I will always want to work in university that needs my sort of expertise or my challenge and push that will treat it, will understand that money is tight, that we haven’t got much, that we can’t sit and complain. We’ve just got to get on with it. And, you know, find our cowboy way through which we did a lot at Bedfordshire, because it’s a small university, you’ve got to get things done. You’ve got to make it happen yourself. So that’s really embedded in a weird way. It’s like a second journey of learning or unlearning and then relearning. That now is central to everything. And I am terribly conscious of my own privilege, and always want to make sure that everything I’m doing is, in short, is elevating somebody else, whether that’s one of my team members that report to me, that’s my approach to kind of leadership, management, whether it’s writing this book. You know, that was about like, here’s the crib sheet, guys, here’s the stuff that people aren’t going to tell you. No, no one who’s been here 20 years really understands it either. So here’s a quick history of why we’re here. Here’s what a vice chancellor is. Here’s what a post-92 is. These things we bandy around that no one knows what they mean. And for those that don’t know what post-92 is, it’s a university. It’s a polytechnic that became University in 1992 when the divide between polytechnics and universities was removed, structurally, but not culturally.
Sarah McLusky 28:02
No, indeed.
Rachel Reeds 28:03
Yeah. So I do like to disrupt, but I try to make it from a place of positivity.
Sarah McLusky 28:08
Yeah. It certainly sounds like, as you see, the things that you’ve done are looking at how you can help other people to to get on, navigate the system. And, yeah,
Sarah McLusky 28:21
Yeah, I think it’s easy, isn’t it, to kind of fetishize that if only the system was different than everything would be fixed. But in reality, it’s about what individuals can do within the system. You know, yes, working to change it, but also working the best you can with what it is now. Yeah,
Rachel Reeds 28:21
Yeah, make the system work or subvert the system as far as you can. Yes, yeah. And that person, when, when I worked a course administration academic, would be like, Oh, but the regulations say we can’t do this. Like, there’s no wiggle room. I’m like, there is always wiggle room. We will find a way. I’d say with applicants, you know, they think I haven’t got the grades to get in. I can’t go to university. Yeah, maybe not right now, yeah, but with information, advice and guidance, and I’m never just going to turn someone away and say, No, you can’t. It’s always not now. Yeah, I think admissions should never be a no. It’s always a not now, but this is what you can do to get where you want to go.
Rachel Reeds 28:55
yeah, definitely
Sarah McLusky 29:16
Fantastic. Oh, well, to get maybe to some of the more conventional questions. I like to ask
Rachel Reeds 29:22
Oh, sorry
Sarah McLusky 29:22
my guests no, no, is this is fascinating. I could rant on about this kind of stuff for hours. So yeah. Tell us about I mean, maybe, maybe it’s the book, but maybe there are other examples, but, um, some things that you’ve done in your career that you’re really proud of.
Rachel Reeds 29:40
Yes, I’m proud of the book, but I am proud of the journey that I went on, and the confidence that I’ve built, and the self belief that I’ve built that meant I could do it. So for me, it was a very empowering experience, despite the constant self doubt and imposter syndrome. Yeah. That represents a journey that I’ve been on and represents my way of, I suppose, articulating in a very substantial way and in a physical way, my belief in authentic leadership and breaking down barriers and making things as transparent as possible. So I’m proud of the book, not for it in and of itself, but for what it represents very much so. And as a leader and a manager, I’m very proud of seeing team members and people I’ve mentored go off and fly. I think that’s that’s the most rewarding, and bizarrely, the bit I love most about my job is not anything to do with HE or the actual work, that my greatest joy is mentoring others and supporting them to go on. So it was a way of, well, of spreading that. But I’m also very proud of some of the, I suppose, the things I’ve done in my career that are evidence of the resilience of our sector and the resilience of the people that work in our sector. So my I did exactly one calendar year in taught admissions before my manager went on maternity leave, and they and left me in charge, and they didn’t backfill my post. I was doing my job and her job, and I didn’t know what I was doing. So making it up as I went along. And it was leaning into the team and leaning into their knowledge. And just start, you know, my I’ve always come back to this. Just start, just get on with it. That taught me that within myself, I have a huge amount that can get me through most things, so I am not and it taught me that there is never, never a barrier that can’t be shifted a little bit or negotiated with or shuffled, but also that you have to protect yourself, otherwise no one else will do it for you. My anxiety during that time went through the roof because of the pressure and everyone was I was always maybe a bit too proficient. Probably should have dropped a few more balls so they might have got a bit more support. But yes, it was a journey of resilience. But yeah, so I don’t think I’m proud of very specific achievements. For me, it’s more about the journey, and the book has been a really nice marker of that.
Sarah McLusky 32:17
And I think from what you’ve said there about that sense of mentoring others. It’s almost like that’s the intention behind the book, isn’t it? So it’s almost that’s more important than the physical your journey, and then the intention behind it, yeah,
Rachel Reeds 32:30
Yes. And I say quite early on the book that I think that one of the biggest frustrations I have is there is so much knowledge in higher education, particularly in professional services, and it is just not handed on, because there are no or very limited mechanisms to do so. So whereas if you’ve become go and get your first like junior lecturer job or become a you know researcher, there’s, there’s so much, there’s so much resource out there, because your professional community that are surrounding you are structured, is structured in a way that encourages that knowledge to be quantified, to be perpetuated. There’s probably someone actually paid someone to write some of that stuff, you know, or it came out of a research project and one of the associated like public engagement elements, was that there needs to be, you know, something built on this that’s about passing on the the project side of the work, rather than just the actual content and output. So it’s about breaking down that barriers. But I also think silence is what impact what I was gonna say, something I was kind of saying silence is what keeps us down, which this is not a revolution, but it it is true that we professional services, quietly amongst ourselves, are frustrated, but don’t always speak up. And my call to action at the end of the book is very much to speak up, speak out. Because we don’t do it enough. We let things happen. I think we can be guilty of that too. So there is a need for us not to just sit and be frustrated, but to speak up and to challenge some of those, those norms around knowledge creation and dissemination.
Sarah McLusky 34:01
I think certainly you might say it’s not a revolution, but I can’t help think we need a little bit of revolution, and that’s definitely part of what I’m in this this for, as well
Rachel Reeds 34:12
Positive disruption.
Sarah McLusky 34:14
Absolutely. Well, I think that’s a really nice place to lead on to question I like to ask all of my guests, which is, if you had a magic wand. How would this world look different?
Rachel Reeds 34:25
Well
Sarah McLusky 34:27
It is a magic wand.
Rachel Reeds 34:28
A magic wand. It can do anything. Yeah. So, I mean, I would ditch the binary about an academic and a professional, and think about structuring an entire, the higher entire, HE sector around much more agile, so that we could draw strengths from people, so people could have predominantly more in the professional space, or predominantly more in teaching, learning space. But there is far too much lost in the inbetween and in those binaries that that could really make it the most wonderful sector. And when you see what’s happening in Australia in terms of the way they. The the professionalization of higher education professionals is about, I don’t know, 10-20 years ahead of in the UK. One Australian university just appointed their first vice chancellor, female vice chancellor that came through a professional route. Not something you can even envisage happening in the UK. I can’t even imagine there being a professional services Vice Chancellor, let alone a female one. It. It’s really distant from what we can think about. And I would ditch the league tables,
Sarah McLusky 35:29
Yeah
Rachel Reeds 35:30
and it would, it would all be about distance traveled, because the entire league tables would then be inverted, because the applicants that I work with come in with very small aspirations and life chances, and the what they go out with is so much more of a journey than what you know a 3 As student from a grammar school comes in with and goes out with, the distance traveled and the impact on their life is so much more substantial. So we I would invert them all together, but also I would reverse some of the narrowing of academic divisions. So even my masters was in interdisciplinary space, and I did a module in the Department of History, and I got my my assignment for that downgraded by the external examiner because there was too much theory in it. And I thought, Well, that’s all. That’s what’s wrong with your discipline, sir. But anyway, didn’t say that totally, but it made me, you know what these they’re so artificial, all of these boundaries. So I would, yeah, disrupt them all together and think about more as assemblages of expertise, rather than divisions, departments, schools and boundaries in the same way,
Sarah McLusky 36:44
Nice. I like the idea of that vision for the future. Fantastic. Well, I think we should think about wrapping up our conversation, but just remind people again, the name of your book, and we’ll put a link in the show notes where they can find it.
Rachel Reeds 37:00
Yeah, it’s Surviving and Thriving in Higher Education Professional Services A Guide to Success, which makes it sound even more distinguished. It’s basically a guide to, it’s a call to action to stop waiting for unicorn to land in your lap and that no one is going to hand you career opportunities that you necessarily might be waiting for. You have to get up, go and do them for yourself. It’s all things that you can do for yourself, to take the reins and to be bold and speak up.
Sarah McLusky 37:26
That’s a fantastic message. And where can people track you down?
Rachel Reeds 37:30
I’m always talking too much on LinkedIn, so I’m quite keen to engage there. But I also have a website which is just my name, rachelreeds.co.uk, which has got my contact details of someone wants to contact and I’ve committed myself for 2025 to do like a monthly free webinar and workshop on different sort of skills and things, because CPD so hard to access. So I like doing anything where I can talk and use a few unicorns or astronauts or something fun. I like a theme.
Sarah McLusky 37:59
Excellent and well, as I say, we’ll put links to all of those things in the show notes. So thank you so much Rachel for coming along.
Rachel Reeds 38:06
Thank you
Sarah McLusky 38:11
Thanks for listening to Research Adjacent. If you’re listening in a podcast app, please check your subscribed and then use the links in the episode description to find full show notes and follow the podcast on LinkedIn or Instagram. You can also find all the links and other episodes at www.researchadjacent.com. Research Adjacent is presented and produced by Sarah McLusky, and the theme music is by Lemon Music Studios on Pixabay. And you, yes you, get a big gold star for listening right to the end. See you next time.