The School of Emergent Priorities has appointed Senior Lecturer Ronja Oyelaran Deputy Convenor of the Strategic Drift Survey, with a standing brief on the consultation record that leaves a settled priority unchanged.
Senior Lecturer Ronja Oyelaran takes a standing brief on the paperwork that keeps a settled priority looking like a question
The Strategic Drift Survey has, each year, put a figure on the distance between the University’s stated priorities and the work its everyday operations actually carry out. That figure now has a second named reader. Senior Lecturer Ronja Oyelaran has been appointed Deputy Convenor of the Survey, with a standing brief on the consultation record a settled priority acquires — a submissions period, a survey, a summary-of-feedback report — before proceeding exactly as scoped.
The consultation record is the part of a settled decision that still looks like a question. I have been sitting with those records. The Survey is where they become a measurement.
— Dr Ronja Oyelaran, Senior Lecturer and Deputy Convenor, Strategic Drift Survey
Dr Oyelaran came to the University from a state planning authority, where she advised stakeholder-engagement processes and later turned to what those processes actually consult on. The deputy convenorship places that work inside the School’s annual instrument: the Survey will now treat the consultation record as one of the places drift can be read.
“Ronja has been showing us the paperwork a priority files in order to stay still,” said Dr Runa Adegoke, Senior Lecturer and Convenor of the Strategic Drift Survey. “The Survey has been measuring the distance. It needed someone who already knew what that paperwork looks like on the desk.”
The School records the appointment as the Survey taking on a brief it had been postponing. The next round falls later this teaching period; the deputy brief takes effect with this announcement.