Rowan Triffitt – Lead Schools Liaison Coordinator

NTU’s been great for me. I like the people, I like the environment, and I like the work-life balance. Most of all, I like the work I do. My mantra’s always been simple: the day I wake up and dread going to work is the day I start looking for a new job. And in twelve years, that day’s never come. I’m happy here.

I’d always wanted to work in the education sector, but knew that I didn’t necessarily want to teach. I had a good experience myself at university, and felt that working for one could be interesting. NTU came along at the perfect time: my mum’s worked at the University for years, too, and I also met my wife here. So there are lots of happy memories, and it really was the perfect fit.

I started out in 2007 as a Market Research Assistant, and my roles since then have had a bit of everything – research and analysis, lots of travel, and working with young people. I’ve built loads of relationships with colleagues throughout the sector, and that’s been invaluable – both in terms of support, and my day-to-day practice.

I’m now managing a pretty new team. Our remit is to increase applications to NTU; to provide the kind of information, advice and guidance to post-16 students that enables them to make the right choices in their own journeys; to build relationships with key stakeholders in sixth forms and colleges; to conduct engagement sessions with those institutions; and to arrange visit days here at the University. There’s plenty of variety.

I love meeting with students. When I was in sixth form, this sort of thing – the outreach and liaison work – didn’t really exist. We’ll only tend to meet a group once, so what we do has to be confident, persuasive, and full of personality. We’ve got to do justice to the University and get people excited about it, because students don’t remember slide shows – they remember people. And that’s where we come in.

We’re feeding into the bigger picture of the University by creating opportunities and enriching society. The nature of what we do is going to be changing quite significantly as we move forwards, and it’s great to be heading that up. There are going to be even more opportunities for the people working in this team, and that’s genuinely exciting.

When I’m delivering talks to young people, I always remind them that it’s ok to not know exactly what you want to do. There’s lots of things that fall into place just by following your passions. And I feel I can use my own life here as an example of that – because just by doing something I enjoyed, I ended up finding a world that’s absolutely perfect for me. One I never knew existed.