ADVISORY BOARD OF THE SUBJECT CENTRE FOR LANGUAGES, LINGUISTICS AND AREA STUDIES

MEETING ON 26 SEPTEMBER 2000 AT CILT, LONDON

Present	
Professor Richard Towell (Chair)	Professor Michael Kelly	
Janet Bartle	Dr Lid King	
Professor David Bickerton	Professor Rosalind Marsh	
Dr Keith Brown	Professor Ulrike Meinhof	
Professor Judith Bryce	Dr Paul Rowlett	
Professor Graham Chesters	Ray Satchell	
Alison Dickens	Professor Anne Stevens	
Dawn Ebbrell	Margaret Tumber	
Professor Dick Ellis	Professor David Walker	
Hilary Footit	Professor Rhys Williams	
Professor Pandeli Glavanis	Vicky Wright	
Elspeth Jones	Liz Ashurst (Secretary)	

1.	Apologies for absence
Professor Marianne Howarth	Derek Winslow	
Professor Ralph Penny	Dr Neil Wynn	
Ron White	

2.	Terms of reference and membership of the Advisory board 
The Chair explained to the Board that the original report from HEFCE outlining the proposals for the Learning and Teaching Support Network (LTSN) had stressed the key role of subject associations in the success of the Subject Centres. The following actions were suggested to strengthen the links between the Subject Centre and the subject associations.
•	Association journals should contain information about the activities of the Subject Centre.  Liz Ashurst would send with the minutes of the meeting a report which could be included in the next issue of such journals.						Action: Liz Ashurst
•	Subject Associations should contribute to CILT’s HE bulletin and the Subject Centre newsletter.
•	The Subject Centre should appear as an agenda item on AGMs of the associations.
•	Members of Subject Centre staff could address association conferences.
•	Subject Centre mailings could be sent to the Chair and Secretary of Associations.  For this purpose, members of the board should provide Liz Ashurst with the contact details of the Chair and Secretary of their association and, if possible, other associations in their constituency.
Action: Board members

It was agreed that a mailbase should be established for Advisory Board members.
Action: Liz Ashurst

It was reported that the Subject centre evaluator, Janet Hooper, would produce a report in advance of each meeting of the Advisory Board.

The Chair proposed that, in the unlikely event of members of the board wishing to instigate a review of the Director’s performance other than the scheduled review, they should contact the Chair who would circulate a report to members for comment.

It was agreed that the membership of the Advisory Board should be mapped to monitor the overall composition of the board. 
Action: Subject Centre staff

 It was also proposed that a system of staggered departures from the Advisory Board be implemented to ensure that the membership in 2002 did not entirely comprise new members.  In order to achieve this, members were asked to notify the Chair by the date of the third meeting (October 2001) whether it was likely that they would be seeking re-nomination.  Initial periods of office would be deemed to end prior to the meeting of October 2002 by which time new members would have had to have been nominated.

It was agreed that the Subject Centre should be interested in both EFL/ESL and the Government’s literacy strategy but that there were resource implications for the Subject Centre if it were to become closely involved in this.  It was suggested that the Chair and the Director might consider liaising with HEFCE to try to obtain increased resources to deal with the literacy strategy adequately.
Action: Chair/Director

3.	Report from the Director of the Subject Centre, Professor Michael Kelly

4.	Subject Centre planning documents 
Items 3 and 4 of the agenda were taken as a single item.  The Director explained that the documentation attached had been sent to the LTSN in June as part of the reporting process. The Advisory Board supported the Director’s view that Subject Centre Staff should not be asked to spend an inordinate amount of time on the production of such planning documents.  He explained that the funding pattern had been changed from a calendar year to an academic year.  Although organisational matters had represented a considerable amount of the time spent in the set-up phase (January to July 2000), it was hoped that this would be less salient in future documentation.  The strategic aims of the Subject Centre were based on those outlined in the original bid sent to HEFCE.

The Director explained that the primary function of the Subject Centre was to serve the needs of the higher education teaching community.  It was reported that the LTSN were considering broadening the remit of the network to incorporate the FE sector and, although some Subject Centres would resist such a move, it was agreed that this Subject Centre would welcome it. 

It was stated that students were indirect beneficiaries of the Subject Centre at present though they may be served directly by some of the material on the website.  It was felt that the Subject Centre should consider in what way and to what extent students could be served directly by the Subject Centre. The proposed inclusion of a postgraduate student on the Area Studies Specialist Group was welcomed.

The Director detailed some of the activities proposed by the Subject Centre to deliver its strategy.
Innovation:
The Subject Centre would facilitate innovation by identifying funding sources and working in partnership with other organisations.  Workshops were being organised.  The Subject Centre would provide information for teachers on innovative practice.  

Dissemination:
Information on innovative practice and more specifically on Subject Centre activity would be provided in newsletters and would be available on the website.  The Chair stated that the challenge for the FDTL projects was to bring their good practice to the wider community.  It was also proposed that links between the Subject Centre and existing mailbases be established. It was also noted that the Subject Centre would be contacting departments to establish departmental contacts.  It was hoped that subject associations as well as CILT would be able to provide names of individuals to provide an initial contact point.

It was agreed that the Subject Centre would need to monitor the reception of information disseminated by the Subject Centre.  Electronic links could facilitate this.  It would be necessary to consider which performance indicators would be significant.  Various performance indicators were noted (website hits, workshop attendance, number of responses to mailings) but that it might be necessary to establish a baseline as soon as possible from which comparisons might be drawn after one or two years.

Cooperation
It was agreed that the Subject Centre should work closely with international organisations like the Thematic Network Project.  It was also felt that the Subject Centre had a key role to play in facilitating debate between the benchmarking committee and the wider community.  This might be done through the Subject Centre website.

It was noted that HEFCE had provided funding to establish the infrastructure of the Subject Centre but that funds would scarcely be adequate to carry out all the proposed activity. The Subject Centre would need to seek extra funding from initiatives both in this country and notably in Europe where considerable opportunities were available. It was also suggested that the Subject Centre should bid to HEFCE for extra funding for specific projects.  

5.	Report from the University of Hull and CILT
University of Hull
Graham Chesters reported that the C&IT Centre at Hull had been funded by the CTI initiative until the end of March 2000.  Some of the CTI staff had been lost which had had some effect on the transition from CTICML to the C&IT Centre.  The team in Hull welcomed the expansion of the remit to incorporate linguistics and area studies.

CILT
Dawn Ebbrell had been appointed as the Higher Education Information Officer and was partly funded by the Subject Centre.  The difficulty of providing hard copy resources for Area Studies was recognised though there had been some initial fruitful discussion on the kind of materials which Cilt could hold.  It was also agreed that Cilt could provide links to other sources of useful materials, particularly to appropriate institutions in London. 

It was also reported that Cilt would be concerned in the next few years with making their catalogues available on-line.

6.	Reports from the Specialist Groups
Languages
The Chair of the Language Specialist Group, David Bickerton, noted that the composition of the group was almost finalised.  David Nott would be joining the group to provide expertise in the field of Language teaching methodology.  A specialist in the field of minority languages was being sought.  The challenges of the group would be to try to cover all languages and cater for teachers of both the specialist and non-specialist learners. It would also be important to meet the needs of the community without duplicating the efforts of other organisations and projects.

It would be important to identify accurately the needs of the user base.  David Bickerton felt that Subject Centre activity should be steered by the expressed needs of the teaching community and that it would therefore be important to monitor enquiries to the Subject Centre.  Subject Centre staff confirmed that emails sent to the general address (llas@lang.soton.ac.uk) would be fielded to the appropriate member of Subject Centre staff.

Linguistics
The Chair of the Linguistics Specialist Group, Keith Brown, reported that the web pages were developing.  He and the Academic coordinator for Linguistics had attended the BAAL and LAGB conferences to promote the Subject Centre.  Correspondence groups were to be established to help identify needs.  It was noted that EFL and ESL were well represented by the members of the Linguistics Specialist groups

Area Studies.
Dick Ellis, Chair of the Area Studies Specialist Group highlighted the broad remit of the group.  It would aim to raise awareness of Area Studies as a discipline and focus their activity on issues of inter-, multi- and cross- disciplinarity.  A particular concern, shared with other Specialist Groups, was the implications of ‘pie-baldity’ raised by cross-departmental teaching programmes.  A correspondence group, a website mailbase and an electronic bulletin would be established.  Two workshops on ethnography and placements abroad were being planned.  It was possible that partnerships with the British Association of American Studies would be forged. 

There was considerable debate as to what communities the area studies group comprised and whether academics in certain disciplines or teaching certain programmes would recognise themselves as members of the area studies community.  It was hoped that the Subject Centre could help to heal certain cleavages which had developed between various sections of this community and that no particular group would feel alienated.  Of particular note was the question of whether academics concerned with teaching literature in foreign languages would be able to identify with the activities of the area studies specialist group.  As with the discussion of literacy, consideration was given to the boundaries of this Subject Centre in relation to the Subject Centre for English.

It was felt that the Management group would need to discuss further the scope of the area studies specialist group and seek advice from the Advisory Board if necessary.  It would be discussed further at the next meeting of the Advisory Board on the basis of further advice from the Management Group.

7.	Evaluation of the Subject Centre 
The board considered the pointers for consideration at the end of the executive summary of the report.

Graham Chesters stated that the roles of Subject Centre staff were clarifying but that such clarity would not be static for long periods.  It was agreed that this reflected the fact that the organisation was a dynamic one which was responsive to current trends and needs.  The Director noted that every effort was being made for the three Directors to meet more regularly although this was not easy.  It was noted that the staff across the three locations worked well together and that the broad issues of line management were being resolved.  The difficulties which had surrounded the creation of the website had been dealt with.

8.	Refereed Journal
It was felt that there were a number of journals already in existence and that it would be important to identify a niche which needed to be filled.  It was decided that the Chair would write a paper outlining the issues surrounding the status of pedagogic research with an appendix giving the titles of learning and teaching journals currently published.  This would be circulated to members of the advisory board for comment.  It could then be sent to the LTSN.  It was recommended that the LTSN should be asked to raise the issue of the status of pedagogic research in the RAE.
Action: Richard Towell

9.	Any other business
No items were taken under any other business.

10.	Proposed dates of the next meetings
1 June 2001
12 October 2001 (this is an amendment to the original date published)
31 May 2002
4 October 2002