Melissa Mulhall appointed South Wales and South West Network Coordinator

Melissa Mulhall appointed South Wales and South West Network Coordinator. We asked Melissa to share a little bit about herself.

Melissa’s background

I have worked in Higher Education for over 20 years now and have worked in a number of central, School and Faculty leadership roles in a number of different institutions: Chester, Reading, Kent. In this time, I will therefore have been an advocate in 4 different AUA Regions (the North Wales and North West, Midlands, the South for the past 11 years and now the South Wales and South West region once I take up my new role at Bath Spa University in the New Year. 

I have found my time in the sector incredibly rewarding and contributing as an active member of the AUA has been a key part of this. I joined the AUA over 15 years ago now and have never once looked back! The AUA and the different voluntary roles that I have undertaken have undoubtedly helped to shape my professional journey and enable me to support colleagues with their own journeys – something I am very passionate about. In this time, I have been awarded Fellowship of the AUA in 2011 (something which I encourage all AUA members to apply for to be recognised for your practice) and served as an elected AUA Trustee from 2008 to 2015. My current AUA hats include AUA Accreditation Assessor, mentor for PG Cert in Higher Education Administration, Management and Leadership and one of the lead annual conference moderators.

Network developments

With over 343 network members across significant geographical spread across Wales and the South West of England, I am so looking forward to joining the South West Region and working with what I hear is an absolutely fantastic group of advocates and AUA members.

My initial focus will be to get to know you all and discover all that lovely best practice that we would wish to build upon as well as consider what key new initiatives we can begin to explore collectively across the South West region. The aim is to work with you all across the region to develop a regional framework built around key objectives relating to the regional AUA event offer, the recruitment of new members, appointment of advocates and the identification and development of CPD opportunities for network members.

In order to assist with this approach, I am keen to build a team to work collaboratively on this and I am therefore seeking volunteer/s who are interested in working with me and taking on a Deputy Network Coordinator role. You can find further details on the Deputy role here and please do get in touch via email if you would like to discuss this with me.

I very much look forward to working with you and I am particularly keen to hear from members to find out what you would like to see as part of the regional offer going forwards.  We will be sending a short survey to regional network members in due course to help us identify what those top early priorities would be for you in terms of the regional AUA offer so we can make sure that we can address those as part of our planning and development. We will be looking to maximise all those virtual networking opportunities as well as returning to offering in person events when it is safe and permissible to do so.

Wishing you all the very best for the remainder of this term/semester and I look forward to meeting all the advocates and members in the South Wales and South West region next year.