Life in the College Office: An interview with Caitlin Pawulski

In the latest of our profiles of staff teams we feature the work of the College Office. See also our earlier interviews with the Lodge team and Development and Alumni Relations team.

Today’s interview: Caitlin Pawulski

The College Office team works closely with the Senior Tutor and is responsible for all aspects of student administration handled by the college, starting with the admissions process, continuing through each course – including scholarships, academic, financial and welfare support – and finishing with graduation ceremonies.

In this interview, Academic Administrator Caitlin Pawulski talks about how the team works with students, reflects on the impacts of the pandemic and looks forward to more time in college in 2022.

Could you start by telling us a bit about yourself and what brought you to Oxford?

I work as the Academic Administrator in the GTC College Office, a role I have been in since 2019. I am originally from Canada and while I have lived in various places across Canada (west, north and east), home is on the east coast in Nova Scotia.

I first came to the UK from Canada in 2012 when I came to complete a year-long Masters in Publishing at the Oxford International Centre for Publishing at Oxford Brookes. Thinking I would have my single year out studying and travelling in England to then return home and take up some fancy publishing role in Toronto or Montreal, I ended up falling in love with Oxford, and changed my whole plan completely!

I worked within the publishing industry in the UK for a number of years before returning to Canada in 2016 where, unfortunately for me, the publishing industry in the Maritime provinces is pretty quiet. I wasn’t ready to move to Toronto and my life kept giving me signs that I would come back to Oxford. Still keeping design and publishing as a side interest I pivoted into student support at one of the universities in my home province of Nova Scotia.

It was here that I realised that I really enjoyed supporting students through their studies. There is so much breadth to student support that I think sometimes gets lost within traditional roles. While working in Nova Scotia I had the pleasure of working with an incredible team at the Sobey School of Business, Saint Mary’s University, where my manager at the time was also a sort of mentor. I learned so much from her – knowledge and lessons that I will have my whole life. She believed in the idea that a person needs to find where their ‘passion and purpose intersect’, and much of our role with the students was to help them try and find that spark; be it through their academics or career aspirations. So, for me, when my husband and I were planning on returning to Oxford in 2018 I knew I wanted to remain within the realm of student support.

You’ve been with Green Templeton since October 2019, could you tell us a bit about your role?

My role as the Academic Administrator is to support students with their academic needs while on course. I work closely with the central university and departments to ensure that students are progressing well on their course; and if a student needs additional support with submissions, extensions, or completing academic milestones I am there for them.

I support a number of other activities within the College Office from welcoming new students in the autumn with inductions, welcome events and the College Life fairs; their allocation of a College Adviser, through their on-course academic milestones, right up to graduation when students then become alumni.

Within my role I manage the college’s Associate Membership scheme which is designed for the partners of current students to also become part of the college community and activities while their partner is a student with us. This is a great scheme that promotes our inclusive, family friendly ethos. One of our Associate Members recently returned to the college, but this time as a student, so it was nice to see the renewed connection they made with GTC.

Alongside my academic support responsibilities, I also oversee a number of our funding schemes and prizes to support academic activities that our students undertake while they are on course; be it conference attendance, fieldwork, electives or internships.

How does the College Office intersect with other teams to support students?

The College Office team, which comprises of the Academic Registrar, Alison Franklin; myself as Academic Administrator, College Office Administrator, Henrietta Smethurst, Admissions Officer, Rebecca Wilson and Allison D’Ambrosia who is our Student Engagement & Welfare Coordinator work very collaboratively to support our students from beginning to end. The College Office is responsible for all aspects of student administration which is handled by the college – scholarships, financial, academic and welfare support from admissions to graduation- and even a little once they become alumni.

Because we are a small college, teams across the college work closely to ensure that while a student is at GTC they get an impactful and positive experience. So, the College Office works with most teams across college in support of this. We work closely with the Events, Estates and Catering teams to organise a number of events and activities to support our students, including our Welcome Events and College Life fairs for new students, various academic, personal and professional development activities and our Degree Ceremony celebrations. The office also works with the Graduate Common Room Committee (GCR) on creating events and activities that support and enhance the student experience.

We also work with the Alumni and Development team on a number of activities organised for our newly minted alumni. We coordinate with Ceri, Sophie and the team on our Annual Leavers Event, Degree Ceremonies and to also assist alumni with historic transcripts and confirmation questions. If we aren’t able to directly help with historic queries (which we really try to figure out ourselves first), we will be able to signpost to other teams, departments or the central university for their assistance.

How has the pandemic changed the way you work?

Throughout the pandemic the College Office remained as a stable system of support for our students even though our delivery had changed. When we couldn’t meet with students face to face, we were thankful to have the software to speak to our students virtually on Zoom or Teams. This enabled us to maintain our level of support for the students when we couldn’t be in college to see them in person.

This was a hard adjustment and came with its own challenges, but also some nice positives. I personally was able to get to know the students much better during the lockdowns; mostly because if a student had a query, instead of putting it into an email, they would call me on Teams and we would have a proper chat – a full conversation about what they were experiencing. It was nice to be able to see people virtually face to face when lockdown was at its peak and we were all craving that social interaction. Although I have now lost count of how many instances of ‘you’re muted!’ I’ve experienced!

Our engagement with students during the pandemic was really important for our team, as everyone was impacted in some shape or form. Some changes for good would, for me, be the flexibility of engagement. I can either email, video call, voice call, or have a chat in the college gardens with a student who needs support. Having this flexibility makes all the difference sometimes. Because everyone was online, and that infrastructure was now there, we also saw increased engagement from some part-time or distance learning programmes who were able to get involved because all our offerings had to be online. This is a huge plus to take away as I think we will always have some kind of virtual welcome element going forward, learning what works and what can be improved.

We were also able to significantly decrease our paper usage in the College Office. We can process nearly all of our applications, forms and guidance online, which is a positive sustainable trend we will continue.

What do you most look forward to about being physically back in college more over the coming months?

College lunches and seeing colleagues!

I love coming into college. My ‘office days’ have become the highlight of my week. I missed the hustle and bustle of people moving about the grounds; hearing voices and laughter through the quad or people playing tennis (my window overlooks the tennis courts), it’s nice to see life returning to the everyday.

The rumours about how good food is at college is not a rumour, it’s a fact. Best college food – Head Chef Chris Lyford and the team are brilliant.

You’ll also never know who will sit next to you at lunch – student, fellow or a staff member. Because the nature of our student population is so diverse you’ll have one group of students discussing geopolitics and two seats down will be a few medics sharing stories and decompressing after a morning of hospital rounds. This generates a really nice social atmosphere that I am looking forward to returning to.

What I learned during the pandemic is that I need people. That social interaction that’s not always through a screen; it’s popping down the hall to talk to a colleague instead of scheduling a Teams call. While I enjoy some aspects of working from home and having the time to pick up some more hobbies, my office mates are my two cats and they make for terrible colleagues, so I am looking forward to seeing my human ones more.