Oxford Brookes University

This is more than a little parochial for me, and just a tad conservative with a small "c" - it reminds me again why little changes can deeply affect people in all sorts of ways. And whilst my own thoughts on this are probably unprintable, and not only because the decision has been made by my employer and landlord and I wouldn't really want to find myself sleeping under a hedge next week, I cannot let this little bit of Oxford's history disappear without some commemoration...

Headington Hill Hall, mark II (mark I is to the far left of this picture), built by James Morrell.

When John Henry Brookes was entering his job as first principal of the Oxford City Technical School in 1928, which, by a circuitous route is the fore-runner of Oxford Brookes University (and so allows us to celebrate our "150th anniversary" in 2015), the Morrell family, already an unusually important non-university influence in Oxford had, six decades previously, built not one, but two grand houses on this side of Headington Hill and had laid out the arboertum/park in their grounds that is now Headington Hill Park, Oxford's most beautiful urban park, if I do say so myself.

Indeed, their estate straddled what is now the main Headington Road out of town, encompassing what is now South Park, Cheney Lane, Cheney School and Oxford Brookes University's main Gipsy Lane Campus, its sports centre and the Cheney Student Village (another hall of residence). They built the land-mark iron bridge across Headington Road on the hill when it replaced what is now Morrell Avenue and Old Road as the main London road, and they owned a farm and other properties on the north west side of Headington Hill Hall that are now allotments and, until yesterday at least, "Morrell Hall" of residence.

The family, which included I believe two Liberal MPs and of course the famous Lady Ottoline Morrell (who started the nearby Garsington Opera which will also, once again, be coming to an end soon I gather) had not lived in Headington Hill Hall since before the second world war, during which it and its park was requisitioned as a wartime psychiatric unit and in 1953 the family sold the hall and park to Oxford City Council until Robert Maxwell started renting it off them ("the best council house in Britain" I believe he used to describe it).

But they retained some of the land around, including that set out by then as allotments on the Marston side of Headington Hill and when the last of the family directly connected with the hall died in 1965, James Herbert Morrell (son of Emily, the last occupant of the hall, and George Herbert Morrell) they made available part of the allotments to the City Council for the development of residences for the students of the now named Oxford College of Technology which had some twenty years previously managed to acquire some of the other Morrell family estate on the other side of Headington Road, which is now our Gipsy Lane campus.

New signs, no sign of Morrell Hall (I'm not sure I'd put the lavatorial status on a road sign!

And those halls have been called Morrell Hall ever since. Until now.

Ten years ago the by then Oxford Brookes University bought land adjacent to Morrell Hall that had been used by government offices since before the war and built what is now called "Clive Booth Hall", named for Sir Clive Booth, the last director of the Oxford Polytechnic and first Vice-Chancellor of Oxford Brookes University who left office the year after I arrived at Brookes. It seems right and fair to want to commemorate the person who managed that momentous transition from polytechnic and council ownership to fully fledged independent university. Indeed I like Clive, for all that he has made his later career out of high office in some of the most powerful QUANGOs in the country - first SEEDA and now the Big Lottery Fund, he is down to earth and always friendly and happy to stop and chat. He was telling me last week in fact how flattered he was, or he thought he maybe ought to be, that there was now a bus running around Oxford with his name on the front (it stops at the halls on Marston Road)!  One of the nice things about working in a university community is that the chief executives, in my experience at least, are nowhere near as remote as they probably would be in private sector businesses of a similar size.

But the university has decided to extend the Clive Booth Hall name to the adjacent, Morrell Hall, site - they were already functioning in terms of management as one site with two identities - with the utilitarian description differentiating the two halves of the hall of either "Clive Booth Hall (ensuite)" and "Clive Booth Hall (non ensuite)".  One might wonder what these titles may be shortened to in the sometimes wicked humour of students!

In a very real sense, we're not talking about a family who happened to live on this hill side but who quite literally made the hillside, in a similar way to the Churchill family or Cavendish family created the landscape of Blenheim or Chatsworth. And so we have to say goodbye to the university's only commemoration of the family without whom the university might still be looking for a suitable home.  You could say that wittingly or unwittingly the Morrells have been the university's biggest benefactor.

"Here lies James Morrell Esq, who died at his bedside at Headington Hill Hall, Sept 12th, 1863, Aged 53" - the grave near the entrnace to St Clement's Churchyard which the family used to reach through the park via the gate on Marston Road.

New blocks are replacing the old at the former Morrell Hall, and they are to have some kind of green energy plant. Little did I suspect at the time that what was intended was to harness the power from over the road in St Clement's churchyard where James Morrell lies no doubt a-spinning in his grave!

You can find lots more information about the Morrell family and Headington Hill Hall and its history at Stephanie Jenkins' very informative Headington website (which also has other links to more information).

And in other news about destruction of historic local interest, here's now what's left of the the majestic old chestnut tree the City Council have just killed in the Headington Hill Park grounds that James Morrell planted 150 years ago:

Felled horse chestnut in Headington Park - apparently this was dangerous. Or something.

Just a quick post to highlight what the Guardian is saying about what I mentioned last week to celebrate Chami Chakrabarti's appointment as our Chancellor here at Oxford Brookes University:

Tackling gender equality in universities | higher news | EducationGuardian.co.uk

Jessica Shepherd reports Tuesday June 17, 2008 - As of this summer, the chancellor of Oxford Brookes University will be a woman. So will the chair of governors. So will the student union president. The vice-chancellor, one of her deputies and one of her pro- vice-chancellors already are....But while higher education may still be thought of as trailing behind other sectors as far as gender equality goes, it is catching up, as Northampton, Oxford Brookes and Winchester show.

In 2006, 42% of senior management posts in UK universities were held by women, while in 2003, 28% were, according to the Higher Education Statistics Agency. It might not be by much, but the percentage of professors who are female has also nudged ahead from 15% in 2003 to 17.5% in 2006. And it is the new universities, in particular the post-92s such as Oxford Brookes, that are leading the change. How have they done it?

"Women typically wait until they have more papers published than Dickens before they apply for a professorship, while men have a go," says Professor Janet Beer, vice-chancellor of Oxford Brookes. "We've changed this by developing a culture in which people, regardless of gender and ethnicity, feel they can put themselves forward for leadership positions."

Brookes encourages flexible working, career breaks, and offers maternity and paternity leave that is more generous than usual.

It has paid off. The university is soon to have a predominantly female top team, with Beer as vice-chancellor; Shami Chakrabarti, director of the civil rights pressure group Liberty, as its new chancellor; a new chair of governors, the Oxfordshire county council chief executive, Joanna Simons; and a new student union president, Lina Mughal.

A pro- vice-chancellor and deputy vice-chancellor are also female. This leaves just two out of five senior management posts occupied by men - a deputy vice-chancellor and a pro- vice-chancellor.

Read the rest. Good stuff!

Actually - we could go one step further and find that now five out of eight deans, heads of academic schools, will soon be women, though I reckon it's only two out of six (three of seven including the Students Union) in the non-academic directorates. But still, a pretty good balance down as far as second tier management!

I don't blog about work much, but this is exciting news you all ought to share! Last year, here at Oxford Brookes University we got terribly excited about being only the 17th UK Higher Education Institution to have appointed a female Chief Executive , in the form of Vice-Chancellor Janet Beer, who's now had her feet under the desk for nine months or so.

Shami Chakrabarti, new Chancellor of Oxford Brookes University

Originally uploaded at Flickr by martinstabe

In the interim we've been looking for a chair designate of the Board of Governors (I am one of the two elected staff governors), and have selected Joanna Simons, the chief executive of Oxfordshire Councty Council, and of course, another woman.

Today, we are very pleased to have announced that our new Chancellor, a position currently held by Jon Snow, is to be another woman very much in the ascendancy and particularly in the news in the past couple of weeks leading up to last night's vote to abolish Habeas Corpus for people the Home Secretary doesn't like the look of, Shami Chakrabarti, the Director of Liberty (whose "new members pack" I received yesterday by chance!).

We were doing quite well actually with gender balance amongst the top echelon of staff here, but I thought it was important to mark that the top three offices are now all held by women right at the top of their respective careers.

...female Vice-Chancellors out of 125 or so UK Universities that is.

My employer, Oxford Brookes University, has announced that its new Vice-Chancellor when Graham Upton retires at the end of the academic year, will be Professor Janet Beer, currently a Pro-VC at Manchester Metropolitan University. There are currently just sixteen female vice-chancellors in the UK.

About time too I say. In a bout of thinly disguised creeping to our new leader I think this is fantastic news. I can't remember the exact numbers but I am pretty sure we have had more female students than male for some years now (in the hall of residence I live in the balance two or three years ago last time I calculated was more like 60-40 female-male). We actually don't do as badly as some institutions in terms of women in "emerging" senior academic positions (though not nearly well enough), but our institutional heads have always been men.

Janet seems to have all the right credentials, though I am still a bit mystified as to why we all got the opportunity to grill candidates for Deputy Vice-Chancellors a few years back but "out of confidentiality concerns" we did not get the same opportunity with the new V-C. But it sounds to me as if the panel have made an excellent choice. Putting us a generation ahead of that "other" university down the hill I suspect (where they even still have different academic dress for women on the statutes).

Some day the glass ceiling will not just crack but will shatter into tiny pieces. With this appointment we will have an equal gender balance in the Senior Management Team itself I believe (though I'm forever losing count of who the various Pro V-Cs are!) But only two out of seven heads of non-academic directorates still and overall in the university whilst two thirds of all staff are women, only just over a third of senior management positions are filled with women.

So, whilst her gender is clearly not the only reason for appointing Janet, as her CV readily attests, it is a great move for the university and a step closer, I hope, to more widespread equality of opportunity for the majority of our students and staff.

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