Interview: Engaging Academics in the Employability Agenda
In this interview, Gemma Kenyon (Director of Careers & Employability at City, University of London and AGCAS Integrating Employability Director) and Stefan Couch (Careers Consultant Team Leader, Queen Mary University of London) discuss the challenges to engaging academic colleagues in the employability agenda. Bringing insight from their own practice, Gemma and Stefan discuss the challenges to high quality engagement, solutions to effective collaboration, the question of embedding employability in curriculum design, and key action points for supporting joined up thinking on employability for careers practitioners and academics.
This discussion is part of a new series of interviews on HE Professional, which brings together professionals from across the sector to explore the latest ideas and evidence on driving enhancement in their field.
About the participants
Gemma Kenyon, Director of Careers & Employability at City, University of London and AGCAS Integrating Employability Director
Gemma has been working in Higher Education careers services since 2009 and has been a Head of Careers since 2013. As Director of the City, University of London Careers and Employability department, Gemma leads a team of around 40 staff in functions such as careers guidance, employer engagement, placements, on-site recruitment agency, volunteering and professional mentoring. The City Careers and Employability service particularly focuses on delivering employability education in the curriculum, credit bearing professional experience modules, proactive and intensive graduate support and targeted support for student communities under-represented in professional employment. The service is underpinned by the thorough use of data at all points of the student and graduate journey. Gemma also leads the development and implementation of City’s institutional employability strategy including the Career Activation Programme according to which all undergraduate programmes have career focus education and professional experience as part of the core curriculum. Gemma became a member of the AGCAS board and the AGCAS Director for Integrating Employability in March 2023.
Stefan Couch, Careers Consultant Team Leader at Queen Mary University of London
Stefan has worked within Higher Education careers services since October 2019 and has been in the capacity of Careers Consultant Team Leader at Queen Mary University of London (QMUL) for the last 1.5 years. As one of the Careers Consultant Team Leaders at Careers & Enterprise in QMUL, Stefan leads all the Careers Consultants in the Faculty of Science and Engineering as well as currently managing two Student Employability Advisers. Currently, Stefan collaborates with a range of different stakeholders such as academics, alumni, current students, employers and researchers in the School of Electronic Engineering and Computer Science (EECS) as well as the School of Mathematical Sciences (SMS) as their Careers Consultant, creating and innovating a range of careers and employability initiatives into the curriculum. Stefan will be moving his Careers Consultancy work to the Institute of Dentistry and Institute of Health Sciences Education at QMUL from June 2023 and will lead on implementing Careers and Employability Education within the Faculty of Medicine and Dentistry as well as the Faculty of Science and Engineering.
