In my last post – which again,
was an embarrassingly long time ago – I talked about the planned ‘Mentoring
Scotland’ conference. I am pleased to say that the conference went ahead on 7
May at the Stirling Management Centre.
The conference was sponsored by Vitae, who provided logistical support in
the form of conference web-pages and online bookings. Financial support for the
event was provided by the Scottish Funding Council, the Leadership Foundation
for Higher Education and the Staff Development Forum. Smaller financial
contributions were made by the University of Stirling, the University of
Strathclyde and the University of St Andrews.
The event programme included the
keynote presentation by Professor David Clutterbuck, the internationally
recognised speaker and writer on the subjects of mentoring, coaching and talent
management. There was also a wide range of workshop sessions during the day
provided by contributors from the higher education sector, the charity sector
and independent consultancy, as well as a session run by the Institute for
Leadership and Management.
My own contribution was to run a
workshop session about using technology to support mentoring schemes. Drawing
on our project to explore this area and concluding with a demonstration of our
own data management solution, the workshop was well-attended and produced lots
of interest and further potential to collaborate with other institutions.
Conference attendance was more
than 80, with representation from 16 Scottish Higher Education institutions,
plus delegates from 11 Universities from England, Northern Ireland and the
Republic of Ireland.
The response from delegates was
very positive with some of the comments from delegates as follows:
“Mentoring Scotland 2013 was the
best staff development events I have been to – extremely well organised,
fantastic group of people, excellent use of time and gave me lots of ideas to
follow up..”
“ great – well organised and
enjoyable…I am leaving brimming with ideas and inspiration and also justification
from my practice choices. ..”
“It was good to attend a
conference on one topic. It was really focussed and helpful. Enjoyable day.
Nice venue.”
“…a really excellent conference.
Well worth the journey.”
“an enjoyable and
thought-provoking day.”
“Very relaxed and professionally
run event.”
“Lots of though-provoking
material. Very worthwhile event – organisation was excellent. Going home with
an action plan!”
Overall the event went off smoothly, was generally
appreciated as a valuable and worthwhile conference, and addressed an important
aspect of current development practice in Higher Education in an engaging and
relevant way.
The slideshows from the keynote speakers and most of the
other contributors are available on the conference webpages at www.vitae.ac.uk/mentoringscotland
