Read: From art to academia

Mark Power is the Academic Registrar and Chief Operating Officer of Liverpool John Moores University (LJMU).

We speak to him about his career journey from an artist into academia and how LJMU is creating opportunities across the Irish Sea and levelling up Northern Ireland as a result. 

Q// Can you tell me about the work you’ve been doing in Northern Ireland and the ‘opportunity bridge’ you have created?

A// Our links with Northern Ireland go back many years and we’ve built a reputation on actually having a presence there, going over and talking to schools and colleges. Our great ambassadors for the University are those Northern Irish students who have travelled over to Liverpool, studied with us and in a number of cases have returned to Northern Ireland and built successful careers. 

We have a relatively small team of people who are dedicated to ensuring that we offer support, guidance and advice both to teachers and college lecturers but also running events to support parents and carers of applicants. That builds a sense of confidence that the institution recognises that the Northern Irish population is particularly important to us and we recognise the challenge that Northern Ireland has as part of the UK. This plays very much into the University’s ethos around widening participation and providing opportunities to students from socially disadvantaged backgrounds. 

Our Northern Irish students represent just over 10 per cent of our population. We have a student population of 20,000 undergraduates, so it’s a large number. We recognise that many of those students are from severely disadvantaged backgrounds and we do a considerable amount of work to raise their aspirations to come to University and once they are here to ensure they get the best possible experience they can. We support them in any way we can to achieve their potential. 

Q// How do you support Northern Irish students once they are at LJMU?

A// It’s recognising that some of the best mentors for students are fellow students and working with them to almost provide a buddy infrastructure for the new students arriving in the city. Our outreach teams continue to work with Northern Irish students, we have a part of the organisation called ‘Skills at LJMU’ which provides additional support in areas such as mathematics, writing for academic purposes - key skills to enable students to develop. 

Alongside that we’ve entered into an organisation called Unitemps where we are seeking to provide the students with paid employment opportunities. We recognise that the funding situation isn’t the same as England and the students aren’t quite as well supported financially.

Q// How has Covid-19 impacted your work in Northern Ireland?

A// We’ve flipped all of that activity online and actually the indication is that we’ve had a greater engagement in the online activity than would have been possible in the face to face events. We are seeing greater engagement in terms of numbers and appetite from potential students for guidance and information. 

We also have a set of summer support sessions that we have run for a number of years and we enhanced them last year recognising that many students hadn’t been in school as much. We ran those online in July and August and they replaced the physical summer schools. Again running them online, gave applicants who perhaps wouldn’t have the opportunity to travel over to Liverpool during the summer more choice. On reflection that is something that we may continue with post-pandemic - providing that additional opportunity as well as the physical interaction. 

Q// Where do you see your work in Northern Ireland extending to next?

A// We’ve been looking at our offer and how we could make an impact in Northern Ireland. Once again that switch to online delivery is likely to provide significant additional opportunities for the Northern Irish population to think about studying - it may be at Masters level, it may be at CPD level. Being able to deliver that remotely may well help us enhance that market as a university.

We recognise that we have many undergraduates who have returned to Northern Ireland that may wish to enhance their qualifications through to Masters level without having to return to England. We offer significant discounts for our alumni - we always want to work with and support those students who’ve made Liverpool John Moores University their first choice in the first instance. 

Q// How did you end up working in the education sector? 

A// I can’t say as a teenager it was part of my plan, my first degree was actually in Fine Art. I graduated in the early 1980s and then came back to Liverpool and over the course of two weeks I was offered two jobs I had applied for. One in an advertising company and one at what was then Liverpool Polytechnic as a technician within the art department, I decided the technician job was the best fit for me. I was still a practicing artist and exhibiting nationally and that was an opportunity for me to continue my artistic career. 

Having been in that role for a couple of years, I took a view that I was enjoying working with people and perhaps the career of an artist wasn’t for me. I became a technical services manager, I then undertook an MBA and moved more into the administrative side of the University. What was important for me was that when opportunities arose, and I felt confident that I could be successful, I would take that opportunity to apply. 

Being in that university environment was important to me, being in that constant learning environment and being able to engage in training, development and learning new skills. I ended up becoming a Director of Academic Planning and then a Registrar, and then Vice-Chancellor on an interim basis for 13 months. I’d started at one end of the University and ended up at the top of the organisation. For me, it was an incredible journey over a number of decades that really wasn’t a career aspiration but something I really really enjoy.