Summer Vacation Tasks: preparation for the new academic year

By the middle of the Summer Vacation (and usually earlier), the final Terms of Reference, Membership and Composition, and meeting dates, of your Committee for the following academic year should have been published on the committee system website.

You need to inform both continuing and new members of the meeting dates well before the start of the academic year (if possible before the end of August). Some newly-appointed members of committees will already have been given a provisional indication of the likely times and frequency of meetings when deciding whether to accept appointment, but will have been told to expect confirmation from their Committee Secretary.

The briefing required by new members, in order to ensure that they have a sufficient understanding of their responsibilities, needs to be considered. Specific documents likely to be relevant are copies of key papers likely to be important as background to next year's meetings, and recent minutes. On occasion it can be helpful to telephone an unknown new committee member initially, as a better impression of their needs may be gained in this way than by correspondence. This may apply particularly to new members who have recently joined the College, or who are not staff or students.

This is also the time to make sure that new members have all your contact details, and that if they are not familiar with the College they know how to get here, and how to book a parking space if they need one. (It is helpful to establish with a new external member whether they will normally need parking, and if so to keep their vehicle details on file so that a place will be reserved as a matter of course each time they attend a meeting. See Practical and Domestic Matters.)

Retiring members need to be thanked for their services. For some committees this may be done orally at the last meeting, but a letter is normally needed if the relevant members do not attend this. This letter could be signed by you or by your Chair and needs to be sent at some point between the last meeting and the end of August. Whether to write letters of thanks to retiring ex officio members as well as appointed, coopted and elected ones, is a matter of discretion.

A list of people other than members who are to be on the circulation list for the Committee's papers, and those expected to be in attendance (either regularly or occasionally), should be agreed with the Chair before the start of the academic year. As a result of the first phase of the Committee Review in 2004-05, most administrators were made members ex officio of committee meetings regularly attended. However, there are some exceptions, such as Academic Board, which has no administrative staff members. The Secretary of the Committee's parent body should normally be on the circulation list whether he or she attends or not. (If you find any of the terminology in this paragraph confusing, you have probably not yet read the Terms and Concepts page of this website.)

If there is a new Chair of your committee next year, arrange a meeting to brief her or him on the Committee's affairs and the main upcoming business likely for the following year. (This may not be necessary if the new Chair is already a member of the Committee.)

Work out the standard deadline by which you need to receive papers for all your meetings for the following year, and notify this to the people who are likely to send you business.

You may find that the Summer is the most convenient point in the year to double-check the last year of minutes and action lists for any outstanding correspondence or other loose ends to be tied up, and to identify early preparations needed for the following meeting. This process will probably also help you to reflect on what went well and badly in the management of the Committee's business, and whether there is anything you can do to improve things for next year - either directly or by making suggestions to other people. (Some of these insights may be useful in preparing for your annual performance review, which for many members of staff takes place during the Summer Vacation.)

If you were too busy to put your permanent records in order and delete obsolete material during the year, you need to find time to do this before the start of the next academic year.

You may find it convenient to order catering for the whole of the upcoming year before it begins.

For a large committee with a high turnover of membership, consider whether the members for the coming near will generally know each other, and if not whether a set of placecards might be helpful at the first meeting.