HKU Bulletin December 2013 (Vol. 15 No. 1)

Supporting Academic Excellence After 15 years of management at Aberdeen University, Dr Steve Cannon has come to HKU to take up the newly created role of Executive Vice-President. HKU Council established the new post of Executive Vice-President to provide strategic leadership and administrative oversight. More specifically, says new incumbent Dr Steve Cannon, the aim is “to come up with a more coordinated approach to supporting HKU’s academic efforts. “The University’s administration includes many areas of professional specialisation and expertise. We see the potential for them to become more cohesive and aligned, and my role is to facilitate and provide the leadership and direction for this,” he says. Dr Cannon’s initial priorities are “to listen, to learn and take the time to understand the culture of the organisation, the sensitivities”. He considers this crucial, particularly having coming from a different university, and a different societal culture. At the same time, universities across the world have many characteristics in common, and he is finding more things familiar here, than unfamiliar. The bottom line, he says is: “Universities are about excellence in teaching and research. My role is to support that academic excellence – all my team’s efforts will be focussed on that.” Dr Cannon believes very strongly that universities should be led by academics. “I believe very strongly in the idea of a university as a self-governing community of scholars. However, I believe equally strongly in the importance of a strong and well-organised team of professional support staff. I am grateful that HKU has given me the opportunity to lead such a team.” He has come to HKU from 15 years at Aberdeen University. When he first arrived there the administration, he says, was not held in high regard – “if anything, it was seen as getting in the way of academic endeavour rather than assisting it.” To rectify that thinking, he and his team identified three audiences that they needed to satisfy: students, academics and ’ourselves’. It’s an ethos that will provide guidance in his mission at HKU. “First, when it came to our student ’audience’, our thinking was that they were our customers and we could not take their loyalty for granted. We had to make the University attractive to students and work to satisfy their support needs and give them an experience that they would remember. “The second group, the academic community, we looked upon as clients. We were providing them with a service and therefore should provide them with as good a service as we possibly could. Universities get funded to teach and to do research; they don’t get funded to administer, so we needed to make sure that our efforts were channelled towards that academic goal. “Thirdly, ourselves. We knew we had a talented team throughout the organisation and we wanted to acknowledge that and to celebrate it. Our aim was to gain parity of esteem across the University’s support services. And what I said in Aberdeen and I will say here is that we will earn that parity of esteem, and then demand it.” Community values ’Customers’ and ’clients’ may sound like business terms, but he is quick to clarify: “I don’t see a university as a business in a commercial sense – the values are very different. A university is more like a town or a community. The values that bind the university community together are not profit-driven business values, but community values.” One of the great attractions of HKU for Dr Cannon was its reputation and global standing. “I’ve never been interested in league tables for the sake of league tables. But why would you not want to be the very best that you could possibly be? I am inspired by HKU’s ambition and by what it has achieved already, as well as its potential.” He is no stranger to Hong Kong or to HKU, having made frequent trips here over the past 10 years. HKU and the University of Aberdeen have long had strong links, and Dr Cannon strengthened the administrative bonds between the two with an exchange programme he set up with Mr Henry Wai, the Registrar, enabling support staff to get experience overseas. Outside of work, Dr Cannon’s interests include watching sport, listening to music and family life. He moved to Hong Kong in the summer and will be joined by his wife next year when their youngest son Jack finishes high school. His eldest son Robert is working in New York, while daughter Alice is a trainee solicitor in Edinburgh. For now though, the centre of his thinking will be work-focussed. In exercising his strategic new thinking for HKU, Dr Cannon will be guided by his enduring motto: “Think globally, behave ethically, act promptly.” Dr Steve Cannon, HKU Executive Vice-President (Administration and Finance) (third from right), officiates the kick-off ceremony of the HKU Rooftop Farming Project on campus. Universities are about excellence in teaching and research. My role is to support that academic excellence – all my team’s efforts will be focussed on that. Dr Steve Cannon 26 | 27 The University of Hong Kong Bulletin | December 2013 People