What Do You Actually Do? Episode 51: Victoria Brooks, University widening participation officer

/ yorkcareers

Listen to this and all the previous episodes.

Interested in a non-academic job in higher education? In this episode Kate talks to Victoria Brooks about her job as Widening Participation and Outreach Project Officer at the University of Liverpool. This is a really interesting area of higher education work.

Victoria’s bio:
Victoria is currently working at a Russell Group University in Widening Participation, where she supports groups of young people from underrepresented or disadvantaged backgrounds into higher education. She has experience in research and evaluation around the topic as well as planning and delivering large scale events for a wide range of stakeholders.

Useful links:

To hear more Education and making a difference related podcast stories:

Transcript:

Kate:

You’re listening to the ‘What Do You Actually Do?’ podcast. Each week we want to bring you an inspiring interview, a useful tip or encouraging message to help you find your place in the professional world. Hello, and welcome to this episode of ‘What Do You Actually Do?’. My name’s Kate Morris, and I’ll be your host today. 

In today’s episode we will be talking about working in the university sector. Today we’re joined by Victoria Brooks, who is a Widening Participation and Outreach Project Officer at the University of Liverpool. So, Victoria, what do you actually do? 

Victoria:

Hi, everyone! As Kate said, my name’s Victoria, and I work at the University of Liverpool and I’m a Project Officer in the Widening Participation and Outreach team. And that’s a very big long team to work in, and lots of people don’t even know it exists. But it’s basically – we work in a team at the university where we work with lots of different students, young people, adults, all who come from what we call underrepresented or disadvantaged backgrounds. So we recognise that there’s lots of people who have the ability to go to university, but they might not have had the opportunity to know about it, or they might not even know how to get into university. So we support primary school students, we support secondary school students, all the way up to what we call mature students, and we support these students with the challenges and kind of prepare these students to come to university if that’s what they decide to do. 

Kate:

So widening participation kind of refers to widening the number of people who participate in higher education. Is that correct? 

Victoria:

Yeah, that’s definitely true. It’s about widening access and how many people can access university. 

Kate:

So what are the actual key elements of your role? Because you are saying you do different kinds of activities and things. What does that look like? 

Victoria:

So every project officer is assigned different areas, different age groups, different groups of young people. So I predominantly work with sixth form students, so that’s year 12 and 13. And I run a massive project called Liverpool Scholars Programme. Now this is a programme with about 300 young people across Liverpool, and we support these students to get into university. And what they do is: they attend several events, they work with the university, whether it’s academics or undergraduate students, to produce a piece of work, and upon completion of that piece of work and finding out a bit more about university and the skills required to attend university, they receive a two grade reduction and a bursary if they were to come to the University of Liverpool. And the idea is that we recognise that the more disadvantaged background you come from, you might not necessarily be able to achieve the grades or the aspirations that you might if you were in a more privileged background. If you’re surrounded by people who are doctors, who have been to university, you’re more likely to then go on to university and go into a more affluent career. So we’re supporting those students who maybe haven’t had the same chances in life, and to make sure that they’ve got all the skills necessary, so that they can go on to those careers if that’s what they choose to do. 

Kate:

So it must be really rewarding work. 

Victoria:

Yeah, definitely. It definitely is, at times. I think it’s definitely challenging. There’s a lot of hurdles that these students face, that I think sometimes we don’t even think about or recognise. And especially in the past year, it’s been even more challenging. And so it definitely is rewarding, especially when we have students who then come to the university, we then give them the opportunity to work for our team, and work on our projects and our events with us. And, you know, we’ve got students this year who have been through the whole process, maybe they’ve been on activities with us in primary school, then secondary school, and then through the Scholars Programme, which is what I run. And now they are graduating and moving on to their own careers, which is really rewarding to see, I think. 

Kate:

Wow, yeah. If you’ve been working with people since primary school and seeing them through to their career – that’s amazing! 

Victoria:

Yeah, definitely. 

Kate:

You mentioned working with large groups of potential students there. How has the pandemic impacted on your work then? Because I’m imagining a lot of it is normally face to face and kind of, you know, interacting with each other etc. 

Victoria:

Definitely. So especially the programme that I run, like I said, we work with hundreds of years 12 and 13. And traditionally it involves three or four key events where they come onto campus, and we’ll take part in lots and lots of different activities across the campus and across the faculties. And that’s usually, you know, 300-400 people coming onto campus, all seeing what the campus is about, meeting lots of undergraduate students, meeting a lot of academics. Obviously, that’s all gone upside down this year because of the current pandemic. However, we’ve got technology, we’ve got the use of things like Zoom, and that’s been really rewarding for us, and we’ve been able to get quite a lot of engagement through that. The only challenges that we face is, because the students we work with, they don’t necessarily have internet, they don’t necessarily have devices, and so it’s finding ways to navigate around that and supporting those students who might not be able to get that access, so that they can work with us and engage in our activities. 

Kate:

So what was your starting point then? Where did your interest in widening participation come from? 

Victoria:

That’s really interesting, actually, so I didn’t do anything to do with this. I didn’t know about it when I was at university. I actually studied a French degree when I was at university. So I went to university for four years. In my third year I went and worked in France, in the Alps, for nine months, and then I worked in Madrid for three, and I came back, and I started thinking about what do I want to do when I finish university. And I think a natural thing that someone like myself, who worked as a teacher, who worked as an au pair, I spent my summers working with young people on summer schools. I thought, you know, I think that teaching is probably the best role for me. I’ve got the skills necessary, you know, I do quite a lot that’s related to teaching. I think it’d be a really good career and a really rewarding one for me to go into, because I knew I wanted to work with young people, and I knew that I wanted to have a really rewarding job, and I actually had an offer to work with Teach First when I graduated. However, I kind of realised that teaching wasn’t necessarily the career that I wanted to go into. I’m someone who quite likes the idea of a really healthy work life balance. And it’s not to say that a teaching career isn’t necessarily that, but for someone like myself, I quite like to have something where I don’t have to take work home with me, and I can leave the office and have a nice evening to do whatever I want. And so I started to think about what I wanted to do. So I decided to take a year out when I left university, and I started working for a summer project called the National Citizen Service. So basically you were working with young people at summer schools, they basically do lots of outdoor activities and the idea is to encourage social mixing. And this is where the idea of different people coming from different social backgrounds, don’t necessarily have the same opportunities as everybody else. I actually come from an area where nobody went to university, it wasn’t the done thing. And I used to go home over the summer and people used to think it was fascinating that I was living in Liverpool. And once I remember seeing a girl I knew from school and she found out that I was living in France, and she thought it was the most foreign thing ever. She was so fascinated by the fact that a) I went to university, b) that I went to live in a different city, and then c) that I was living in a different country. They found it so fascinating, because where I lived not many people move away, not many people go abroad. not many people have degrees. So I think I started to really realise, you know, what widening participation is and what it meant. And so I just started to look at different roles, really. And I was fortunate enough that when I left university, the university that I was working at was offering internships for their graduates. So they had loads and loads of different opportunities. and you just basically had to say what type of thing you were interested in. So I said that I was interested in education and social mobility, and I was fortunate enough to be put with an academic who was the head of widening participation, and she basically did lots of research around widening participation. So I worked with her for about a year. I didn’t do any engagement, I didn’t run any activities. But what I did was – I did a lot of research, so I looked into what we do in terms of widening participation at the university, what other universities do, how we could improve what we do, what a widening participation student looks like when they are at university, and how we can support these students further. And I actually found that that was really, really beneficial to start off with. I was like… Research? No, I don’t want to do research. I’m a people person. I don’t want to read, I don’t want to write essays. I just want to be working with people. But actually doing that research, doing that internship was really beneficial for me, because I’m actually now starting to think about what I want to do in my future career, and actually, I want to start working in policy-making, whether that’s at university or in the government. I think some of the skills I developed during that internship were really, really key to me thinking about my future career now. So I was fortunate enough, like I said, to get an internship. I found out a bit more about widening participation, I met lots of people in the widening participation team, and then I was fortunate enough to get a job within the team after a year or so. 

Kate:

So before you did that internship, did you know what widening participation meant? Was that like an area you wanted to explore? Or were you literally – Look, I’m interested in education, I’m interested in social mobility, but it was kind of the internship that then taught you that widening participation exists. 

Victoria:

Yeah, definitely. Yeah, I didn’t know what widening participation was, I didn’t know what the word meant. I just knew about social mobility in general. And I started to read around different charities that did social mobility work, but I didn’t know about the team actually before I moved and started working the internship at the university. 

Kate:

So it sounds like your sort of work related experiences really had a massive impact on your career choice, because in your year abroad you did that teaching. Obviously you’re really good at it to get accepted on the place for Teach First. But it sounds like it helped clarify for you what you really want from your career. And whilst there were elements of it that you obviously enjoyed, like working young people etc, you recognised the actual lifestyle etc that might come with that career wasn’t for you. But then doing the other internship was a way of discovering this whole new sector that you didn’t know about, and realising, yeah, this is where I can fit my skills into. 

Victoria:

Yeah, definitely. I think that’s exactly it, you’ve hit the nail on the head there, Kate. I think, I didn’t know that this sector existed at all, and I didn’t know about the opportunities that you could have working at a university. I think I come from a very small town like I said, where basically the idea is you go and be a teacher, you know, you’ve got a French degree now, what is that to do with that, OK, you go and become a French teacher. When actually it’s not necessarily about the fact that I can speak French, or that I know about French history, it’s about the skills that I’ve developed during that degree, which can now help me develop in my career. And I think that it wasn’t until getting the internship that I found out about these amazing opportunities that there are, not just at universities, but, you know, in general. 

Kate:

On that point about skills then, it sounds like you recognise your skills were really transferable. What would you say are the kind of skills or sort of qualities someone needs to have to be happy and successful working in widening participation, or sort of outreach related work? 

Victoria:

I think we have to be quite outgoing. I think for someone like myself, especially in the front-facing role, you have to be willing to work with anybody, you know, and communicate really effectively with those people. You know, I have times where I’m speaking with families and young people where English isn’t their first language, and one on one with the student. And then there’s other times where I’m, you know, presenting in front of 300 parents, plus teachers, plus young people. So I think you have to be prepared for any kind of situation. And I think, you know, learning public speaking and learning how to communicate effectively with any form of stakeholder is really important. And I think it’s just a thing of organisation as well. As you can tell, I work on multiple projects, there are multiple events, so I have to kind of deal with lots of different things at the same time. So I think in terms of organisation and making sure that you’re really, really well-organised with all of your work and your time scales and things like that. 

Kate:

So you mentioned earlier that you feel the role is really rewarding, and it’s kind of obvious why that is. What’s the worst aspect of the role? 

Victoria:

I think the worst aspect of the role is that unfortunately you can’t help everybody. I think sometimes I’m thinking – OK, I’ve helped this one person, I’ve helped this one group of people. But actually, I want to do this for everybody. And how can I achieve that? And this is why, as I mentioned earlier, I’d quite like to move into working in policy, whether that’s at the university or for the government, because I want to try and make sure I’m making as big of an impact as possible. And I think sometimes it’s a bit disheartening when you realise that you can’t help every single person, or for some people there’s a lot of challenges that have come their way, and there’s nothing that you can do to help them. I think that’s when you feel the most disheartened. 

Kate:

I think that’s a really interesting point. And lots of people who want to do something where they’re helping people, there’s those two strands really, aren’t there. There’s this kind of face to face helping where you see the impact that you’re personally making on someone’s life. But then, as you say, there’s a limit – you’re only one person and there’s only so many people you can see. Or there’s this more strategic form of helping where you’re working on policy development and kind of, you know, schemes that might be years in the planning, which are hopefully going to make a long term impact, but you don’t then get the benefit of seeing the immediate results and hearing necessarily the personal stories. So it’s kind of interesting that you have really enjoyed the face to face stuff, but are now wanting to explore the more strategic bigger picture side of it. 

Victoria:

Yeah. And I think that’s probably because I have worked with one to one, I’ve worked on a very small scale front facing, I think I could see the impact I’m having short term. But also I think that also makes me see that if this was done, you know, in the world, or in this policy, or at this university, then think of the bigger impacts I could have. So I think it’s by working on the ground, I know what bigger impacts I could do if I was working on a larger scale. 

Kate:

So in terms of looking to the future, what do you think the key sort of challenges will be for widening participation and the HE sector in general over the next few years? If you’re sort of noticing stuff like that, where policy needs to be developed or changed, what’s on your horizon or what do you think students who are interested in this should be thinking about, and maybe sort of anticipating in the future? 

Victoria:

If we’re looking right now and over the next couple of years, we’re thinking about how students from disadvantaged backgrounds have been affected by the current global pandemic. Students who come from more disadvantaged schools, more disadvantaged areas, they will have missed out on so much more schooling and education than any other student from a more privileged background. And on the back of that, if there are parents who’ve maybe lost jobs, it’s the knock on effect of that, which means that these students won’t have just been affected by their education, but also possibly by the living situation. There’s a lot of different things to think about in that, and it’s also the knock on effects that will have on a student. They won’t be thinking about coming to university, they might not even be thinking about finishing their exams. They might have to start taking jobs on to support their families. You know, there’s a lot of knock on effects that this pandemic has had on everybody, but also on this group of students in particular. And so I think it’s thinking about how we can react to that? How can we be as active as possible and start thinking about supporting these students as early on as possible, so that they can follow these aspirations and learn more about these different careers available. 

Kate:

I think it will be interesting to see how that pans out, because there’s been loads in the news about digital poverty and the effect on sort of education, but I think you make a really important point there about what it means for the sort of longer term implications. 

Victoria:

Yeah, definitely. And I think we’re already seeing that in those students. The criteria for our programmes are based on GCSEs, because we want students to have GCSEs, which means that they can get into universities. However, as we know, GCSEs weren’t predicted correctly last year, so I think we’re already seeing it now, and we’re going to be seeing it even more in the future, when we’re thinking about students who maybe haven’t been in school for a whole year to how are they going to catch up on that. And you know, how does that make up for that time as well. 

Kate:

So I guess it’s kind of being aware of these things, but also trying to think creatively about how to address these issues and make a change, and where it’s accessible for people not just through necessarily the digital side of it, but something where anyone could access it. 

Victoria:

Yeah, definitely. And it’s not just working individually as a university, you know, we work with schools, we work with colleges. It’s figuring out how we can work in partnership to make sure that we’re supporting those students who need it the most, and also who have the ability and the aspiration to do so as well. 

Kate:

What advice would you give students who are thinking about working in the sector? Is there any particular work experience that would help them either to get a taste of what this type of work is like, or to make them more attractive as a candidate applying for sort of widening participation related jobs? 

Victoria:

Yeah, definitely. So at the University of Liverpool – and I think it’s very similar to the University of York – the projects we run, we always need undergraduate students to work for us. For us one of the most beneficial things is having undergraduate students there as active role models and supporting us in the massive events. Obviously, as I said, I run events for 300 people and they would not function without undergraduate students working for us. So first of all, I’d say, look within your university, within your widening participation team and see if there are any opportunities – whether that’s paid or voluntary – where you can support that team. And I think once you get the opportunity to work on an event, also, you can start talking to staff and learning a bit more about the opportunities available. And if that isn’t available for you, there’s a lot of other organisations that run similar projects. There’s a group called the Social Mobility Foundation, there’s a group called IntoUniversity, and they’re always looking out for undergraduate students to support them, whether that’s through volunteering or internships or paid work, there’s always something available for you. 

Kate:

That’s brilliant, thank you. I guess we should probably point out that widening participation is a thing, is a national thing – it’s not just at the University of Liverpool and University of York. It’s something that the whole nation has got sort of objectives for trying to increase participation. So there will be activities going on across the country, and probably in different countries around the world as well. Social mobility is such a big issue, it affects everybody, isn’t it? 

Victoria:

Yeah, definitely. And I think, you know, I didn’t even realise this until I started working in the team, we’re all being monitored by a government group called the Office for Students. Every university has a target for how many students from different backgrounds that they get into university. It’s not just – get the richest, who can spend as much money, it’s – get everybody in who can achieve the right grades, go to university, but also make sure we’re being fair, and we’re making sure the students from different backgrounds are coming into university, which I never realised until I came in and started working here. 

Kate:

Well, for more info about the sort of careers that we’ve mentioned today and those organisations that Victoria’s mentioned, I’m going to add relevant links to the show notes and a link to the full transcript of today’s show. But Victoria, thank you so much. That was really insightful information. Thank you for taking the time to do this and and share your experiences. 

Victoria:

Thanks for having me, Kate. And best of luck to anyone who is looking for a career in widening participation. 

Kate:

Thank you for joining us this week on ‘What Do You Actually Do?’. This episode was hosted by me, Kate Morris, edited by Stephen Furlong, and produced by both of us. If you love this podcast, spread the word and follow us. Are you eager to get more tips? Follow University of York Careers and Placements on YouTube, Twitter, Facebook and Instagram. All useful links are in this episode’s description. This has been produced at the University of York Careers and Placements. For more information visit york.ac.uk/careers