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Campus close-up: University of Leeds

Yorkshire powerhouse puts accent on interdisciplinarity, research themes and life lessons for undergraduates

七月 10, 2014

As a former principal and vice-chancellor of the University of Dundee and ex-chief executive of the 成人VR视频 Funding Council for England, Sir Alan Langlands thought he had “seen it all” in higher education.

However, he admits that even he has found the sheer scale of the University of Leeds, with its 33,000 students and 560 undergraduate programmes, “quite daunting” – as well as “hugely energising” – since he became the institution’s vice-chancellor last October.

However, he also sees Leeds’ breadth of coverage as a distinct advantage in terms of managing risk in an era of great uncertainty in higher education – particularly once the undergraduate numbers cap is removed in 2015-16.

He also wholeheartedly approves of the university’s efforts to capitalise on that breadth by expanding its existing prowess in interdisciplinary research – not least because it will also allow Leeds to leverage the strengths of its most successful groups, including environment and earth science.

According to David Hogg, pro vice-chancellor for research and innovation at Leeds, interdisciplinarity is something the university has prioritised for some years in specific areas, such as water research. According to bibliometric analysis, the results have been highly successful.

The university now plans to duplicate the feat in a range of other “themes”, such as energy and food, with others to be announced shortly. However, counter to the approach taken by some other institutions, the relevant researchers will not be co-located in new institutes; rather, they will remain based in traditional departments in order not to jeopardise Leeds’ disciplinary strengths.

“We have a big opportunity and appetite for promoting interdisciplinarity. So do many universities, but because Leeds is big and we have been doing it for a long time, we think we know how to do it,” Professor Hogg says.

Sir Alan notes that the interdisciplinary agenda chimes with the challenge-led approach being adopted by many funders, including the research councils and the European Union. He is confident that the larger units of assessment in the 2014 research excellence framework will serve to reduce the risk that its assessment panels will struggle to give interdisciplinary submissions a fair hearing, as has been the accusation in the past.

Other priorities for Sir Alan include expanding Leeds’ international offering – “not by recruiting more students but by building longer-term education and research partnerships in key places around the world”. So rather than setting up fully fledged branch campuses in other countries, Sir Alan’s intention is to collaborate with local universities on ventures such as joint schools in science, technology, engineering and maths subjects.

“The rationale is to create an environment in which Leeds students benefit from people coming here from abroad and [have a greater opportunity to] spend time in another country,” he explains.

That emphasis on “combining subject knowledge with opportunities” – such as studying abroad for a year or having a year out in industry – is, in Sir Alan’s view, Leeds’ greatest strength.

Enhanced development

The institution’s commitment to offering its students multiple personal development opportunities beyond the standard academic curriculum is manifested in its Leeds for Life programme. Launched in 2008, the programme offers a host of volunteering opportunities, many of which are now compulsory parts of courses. Students may apply for grants of up to ?500 towards projects they come up with that will demonstrably enhance their generic skills, such as teamwork.

An online “personal development timeline”, to which students and the university contribute, allows students to record their extracurricular activities, and one-to-one meetings with personal tutors several times a year are aimed at not only reviewing academic progress but also encouraging students to reflect on the skills they have learned and how those relate to their career aspirations.

According to David Gardner, head of student opportunity and enhancement, the timeline is also intended to be a memory jog for students struggling to provide concrete examples of their skills development on job application forms.

Students’ participation in any of about 100 volunteering opportunities certified by the university to provide graduate-level skills is also recorded in an achievement record, presented to them alongside their graduation certificates. An online network has been established of Leeds alumni willing to mentor students or provide them with internship opportunities.

“Leeds is really ahead of the curve on all this,” Sir Alan observes.

In numbers

560 undergraduate programmes

paul.jump@tsleducation.com

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