Learning Administration on the Job!

One of the roles an unsuspecting academic is invariably called to play sooner or later in one’s career is that of an administrator. That there is no prior training made mandatory for academics in this regard has never been understood as a serious omission in their continuing professional development. My own realization of the inadequacy of possessing such skills prompted me from fairly early on in my academic career to seek training aimed at mitigating this lack.

Owing to the limited training opportunities which were readily available in the areas that were relevant to the university setting, the setting up of the Staff Development Centre at the University of Colombo in the 1990’s was a most welcome phenomenon – providing me and other academics a very useful resource for self improvement. Apart from the learning opportunities it provided, the training programmes conducted by the Centre also brought together like-minded academics who were facing very similar issues.

Even though at the time, I did not hold any major administrative posts, these workshops prompted me to seek institutional membership of the British Council with the express view of borrowing the excellent training videos that started populating the then rather thin video collection. Some of the more relevant material was then shared with my fellow academics at the then Department of Statistics and Computer Science, with sometime for discussion after the viewing of the video concerned. Some of the areas covered in these videos included Time Management, Managing Meetings, Prioritizing Work, and Ethics at Work.

An extended ‘double-term’ sabbatical in 2001 and 2002 helped me in numerous ways to glean some of the essential skills and practices which were going to be extremely important upon my return to accept the headship of a department in the newly formed University of Colombo School of Computing (UCSC). While much of the learning happened through reading and finding resources on the Internet, the Human Resources Service Centre at the Carnegie Mellon University provided an excellent environment for concentrated learning of a wide cross-section of administrative and academic topics. Some of the areas of key importance included workshops and sessions on Emotional Intelligence, Conflict Management, Personality Types, Problem Based Learning, Peer & Student Evaluation, and Curriculum Design.

Since returning to the UCSC in 2003, I have had to play a progressively increasing administrative function commencing with being appointed the Head of the Department of Computation and Intelligent Systems. Several short periods as Acting Director of the School also helped equip me with some of the finer points related to administration in the Sri Lankan context, often requiring the adaptation of modern management practices of the West which dominates much of the literature and training content.