The University of Brighton School of Business & Law has a new Dean. We were delighted to sit down with Professor Catherine Robinson to learn who she is, where she came from and what new elements she might bring to the School

Welcome to Brighton, Catherine. Can you tell us about your previous roles and experience and what do you think of Brighton as a City?

I have joined Brighton after ten years in the Business School at the University of Kent. In previous roles, I’ve been based in Portsmouth and Swansea. I have to say, it is wonderful to be back in a seaside community again. There’s just something about it – a deep breath of sea air and almost anything feels possible!

My previous role at Kent was as the Deputy Dean, leading on Accreditations in the Business School.  The Brighton School of Business & Law is on the accreditation journey also, with recent success in achieving AACSB – we do love an acronym! Essentially, this puts Brighton in the top 6% of Business Schools globally. 

It signals our commitment to delivering an internationally-recognised standard of business education that’s forward-looking and informed by the very best and brightest of academic and business minds. This, coupled with our Small Business Charter and all the opportunities that affords us, including Help to Grow Management, offers us a local-global interface that enables us to meaningfully contribute to regional economic growth and development. 

I’m also a Professor of Applied Economics. My research focuses on productivity and skills. I seek to analyse how firms perform and how they can get better, whether it’s through (for example) having better technologies or processes or people. So, I’m keen to listen to the needs of local businesses. 

Having had considerable previous experience with Business Schools, are you planning to make many changes at Brighton or introduce any new elements or courses?

Business Schools are very much about embracing change. Ensuring that our curriculum is up to date and relevant is a very important part of my job. But I am lucky enough to be surrounded by experts in their fields.

There will be new developments, like our new undergraduate programme on Business Analytics that’s scheduled to start next academic year. This initiative is joint with the School of Architecture, Technology and Engineering, and recognises the importance of Big Data and AI in business decision-making. It aims to equip our graduates with the technical skills the labour market will be looking for in this incredibly dynamic business space.

At the same time, the university aims to develop key graduate attributes that will continue to ensure Brighton students stand out – for their resilience, their commitment to equality and diversity and their solutions-focussed innovation.

We are also looking at other routes into education. We understand that learning takes place throughout our life, and Universities need to be open to provide these opportunities. Whether it’s through apprenticeships that fit alongside work, or short courses such as the Help to Grow Management programme that has enabled more than 200 small businesses in our region to come to us and reflect on their potential for, and routes to, sustainable growth.     

Aside from new offers, we continue to ensure that we have the latest content in our courses, informed by research and best practice, delivering on Practical Wisdom. 

How important is it that the Business School engage with local businesses?

It’s so important. Across the university, it matters, but it is essential for the School of Business & Law. There are so many ways in which you can interact with us and we are keen to foster even more opportunities. 

For example, these might be live briefs with our students – come to us with a problem and working with one of our excellent colleagues, we aim to set it up as a classroom learning experience. Knowledge transfer partnerships are a great way to work practically with our academics.  And I’ve mentioned Help to Grow already – a fantastic way for leaders of businesses to come and update themselves on the latest knowledge by taking a 360º look at business functions and how to grow their organisation.

All universities are currently gripped in a funding crisis – do you feel this might affect the Business School in any way? Do you feel that higher fees or fewer courses is the answer?

The cost of higher education and the sustainability of the funding model across the UK has been the source of much discussion. This is a conundrum that’s not easily resolved. I think it may mean that some universities will offer fewer courses because some are no longer popular. To be more demand-led is not a bad thing per se but it’s a balance. 

At the school level, we are working to increase the ways in which higher education can be delivered and want to ensure that the quality of education is the best it can be for different types of students. Decisions about fees are out of our hands, but we can try to be as nimble as possible.

As a sector, higher education has faced other challenges such as the increase in the cost of living. Locally, Brighton has found ways to help our students with initiatives such as the Brighton Boost, which offers help with accommodation costs – something we know helps in the first year of study. Business Schools are known for their global diversity and have also been affected by geopolitical changes that have hindered international travel so we are absolutely delighted to have our overseas students join us this year.  We value the cultural diversity and experience they bring to our communities. 

How might you widen participation and inclusion within your business students to ensure that the next generation of business leaders reflect that?

Our School’s mission is to advance, support and shape responsible enterprise for a fairer society, preparing learners for practice and promoting inclusive practices that respect diversity. Thus, widening participation and increasing inclusion is at the very heart of what we do.  It helps with us having a very diverse faculty – our academics
come from more than 20 different countries. In addition, we try to ensure that our assessments are authentic and represent problems from the real world – practical wisdom! And finally, we aim to support our students in the transition into university and then out to the world of work – there’s always support available. 

One of our titles is Dynamic Magazine, the only UK magazine dedicated to women in business and we work hard to encourage female participation across all business sectors, but such participation starts at school, and then university. How can the business school ensure it has a 50/50 gender split across all courses?

We are lucky at the Business School in having a good gender balance and pride ourselves on our inclusivity.  We can always do better. One of the accreditations we pride ourselves on is our Athena Swan Bronze award. It’s not all about gender, of course, and intersectionality is something we are acutely aware of, but if we can make some headway in breaking down barriers in regard to gender, there may be some quick wins in other areas of underrepresented groups simply because we are more attuned. 

At a recent Round Table event on the subject of Women in Tech, it became evident that there is huge male domination in the tech sector, with one of the reasons being a lack of female role models in education. Do you identify with that and how can we ensure more female role models in male dominated subjects?

It’s a big problem and one I’m familiar with in economics but one that we absolutely have to address. If you only have 50% of perspectives involved with any conversation, you will only come up with solutions that suit 50% of society.  There are incentives to enter STEM disciplines but we see less effort in the world of Business. We host a number of events to increase diversity – our Women in Business series of networking, talks and discussion this year is an example of this.