LSE
The London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE) is a social science specialist university based in London.
From January 2022 to July 2023, I worked as a strategic consultant and project manager, supporting the university to respond to the new access and participation requirements from the Office of Students, the regulatory body that oversees higher education.
policy response
One of the key areas of my work on joining LSE, was to support the development of the institution’s response to the new requirements set out by the Office for Students’ Director for Fair Access and Participation. This included supporting the Head of WP with the development and drafting of the 2023/24 Access and Participation Plan (APP) Variation. To achieve this, I worked with colleagues across the institution with responsibility for the different stages of the student lifecycle and consulted with students to produce the APP Summary.
reports and briefings
The period during which I worked with LSE, saw many policy developments in the access and participation space. I provided papers and briefings to the institution’s APP Steering Group and senior leaders, summarising the policy guidance, identifying risks and opportunities and setting out options for responding to the new requirements. To inform the institution’s response to the new requirements, I conducted desk research into sector practice, producing reports for project working groups.
Governance
One of my tasks on joining LSE, was to develop the governance around the institution’s access and participation work. This included clarifying the roles and responsibilities of staff and committees in the development, delivery and monitoring of the APP, ensuring effective reporting between the APP Steering Group and the committees it reported to, as well as those that reported into it. As part of this work I set up the institution’s APP Monitoring and Evaluation Sub-group, writing the Terms of Reference and recruiting members.
'Stephanie did an outstanding job here at LSE working for around 18 months as a strategic project manager in the Widening Participation team. During a time of great change for the team, she brought her significant sector knowledge and insight and quickly got up to speed to be able to lead on the day to day delivery of our Access and Participation Plan work, with minimal supervision.'
Jess Bond, Head of Widening Participation, LSE