Written by Tony Clark –
In the recent university achievement awards the Work-Based Distant Learning team was very pleased to accept a Team Award for military engagement. It is good to see that the team has not sat back on its laurels but taken great strides forward to develop engagement and work with its military partners.
Like any organisation, the MOD often goes through its own challenges. Recently due to the need for urgent repairs to accommodation at RAF Cranwell, the Defence Logistics Staff Course has had to relocate from its home base to RAF Wittering. For the military, such a move at short notice is not unknown and indeed people might argue it is part of the ethos and DNA of the military. However, for University staff used to working in set and fixed environment short notice movements are the rarity and certainly not seen as the norm.
It is pleasing to see that across the Business School staff members have come together to continue the excellent education that is provided to their defence colleagues. At short notice, Dr Andy Brookes was able to develop his learning material to meet a very new classroom environment at very short notice. His grace under pressure should stand as an example for us all to see.
Perhaps this situation is best exemplified by a short vignette……
It was a cold wet November evening. The long drive down the solitary A1 on a Sunday seemed to last forever. After booking into the guardroom and getting the keys to the accommodation, I faced a lonely walk across the deserted winter airfield in the dark (Remembering the street lights have been removed so the Airfield could be hidden during the war but nobody had remembered to put them back).
A solitary wondering brought me to the grim outlines of the accommodation block only to be faced by the key code lock. Unfortunately, nobody had remembered to give me the key code.
Standing there alone, frightened, in the dark and desperate for a good night sleep, isolation crept over me. The last port of call was a desperate text message to my colleague hoping that he had managed to secure not only the room key but also the magical code needed to enter the building. It was a great relief as I turned to face my colleague with a grinning smiling face opening the door and saying ‘welcome home’.
It is this sense of adventure and willingness to work to support our students in difficult challenging and new situations that makes me feel pride in working for such an institution where this is just a normal action. It is this “norm” the Team Award has recognised.
The military pride themselves on their agility and flexibility to meet new and emerging situations. So, as reflecting practitioners, we might consider that not only are we helping our military colleagues to learn about commercial logistics and how it might be applied to the military situations, we are also learning. It is those hidden skills that we are absorbing. The softer skills of being adaptive and adopting the behaviours and attitudes needed to be resilient which is the reciprocal learning taken from our military engagement.
So, in many ways we must recognise the contribution of our students and military peers in our award. The hug says it all.