Name: Robert Horton

Job title: Senior Administrative Officer / Department Administrator

Department: Physics / History

Number of years at Warwick: 20

There’s no such thing as a typical day, but, in brief, my job involves...

anything that will help to reduce the administrative burden on academic staff whilst also providing high quality support for departmental staff and students and satisfying all requirements passed on by the University’s central administration. It is the broad scope and variety of this departmental administration work, and the multitude of different people I typically engage with to accomplish this work, that I find highly engaging.

My most memorable moment at Warwick has been...

meeting my wife.

In my time at Warwick, the biggest change I’ve seen is...

in the physical campus. My grandfather was one of the groundskeepers of the Westwood Teaching Training College before that part of the campus was passed from Coventry City Council to the University, and we used to walk my grandfather’s dog on the fields that surrounded Westwood and the University campus. Those fields no longer exist, and the campus continues to get bigger every year.

It would be really useful to work more closely with...

local businesses and institutions, to try and give Warwick a better sense of being a valued and valuable part of the local community.

Warwick's unique because...

no other university has a Koan.

The best thing about working at Warwick is...

the people. An important part of any good working environment is colleagues whose company you enjoy and skills you can rely on, and Warwick has plenty of those.

If I could change one thing at the University it would be...

better road access to campus. Starting and finishing the working day with a crawl through slow-moving traffic is far from ideal, and the problem seems to me to be getting worse.

I'm really glad I got involved with...

the sporting opportunities available to staff on campus. I have played in the Friday lunchtime volleyball matches and been a member of the staff squash league for twenty years. They are great opportunities to meet and interact with other staff that I might not otherwise cross paths with, as well as providing enough exercise to make me feel less guilty amount the volume of sweets and cakes I typically eat.

I make use of...

the Sports Centre. I regularly play volleyball and squash, and try to get out for a lunchtime run whenever I can. I am very much looking forward to the updated facilities of new Sports Centre in a couple of years’ time, and am hoping that Warwick Sport will set up an annual staff sports day and a Warwick University half marathon or 10k run.

My favourite place on campus is...

the secret tunnel that runs underground from University House to the Westwood running track.

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