HE dream team to join IOE
23 July 2010
Two distinguished professors are to join the IOE as joint Chairs of Higher Education Studies. Claire Callender, Professor of Higher Education Policy at Birkbeck, and Sir Peter Scott, Vice-Chancellor of Kingston University, will start their part-time posts in the coming months.
Professor Scott will join Dr Paul Temple as co-director of the IOE's prestigious MBA in Higher Education Management.
Professor Sir David Watson, who currently directs the course, has been elected as the next Principal of Green Templeton College, Oxford. He will take office on 1 October.
Professor Michael Shattock, founding co-director of the programme, which was launched in 2002, will continue as visiting professor. He has just been awarded an Honorary Degree of Doctor of Laws by the University of Aberdeen.
Peter Scott will be retiring as Vice-Chancellor of Kingston University, a post he has held since January 1998. From 2000 to 2006 he was a member of the board of the Higher Education Funding Council for England (HEFCE). Previously he was Pro Vice-Chancellor and Professor of Education at the University of Leeds. He was also the Director of the Centre for Policy Studies in Education. From 1976 to 1992 he was editor of The Times Higher Education Supplement.
He now plans to follow up work he undertook on mass higher education while at Leeds. "I have always felt that the development of higher education needs to be related more to wider cultural and social developments." He also hopes to examine the question of what sort of scientific knowledge is needed by the general public in an age of uncertainty.
Claire Callender, who will continue as Professor of Higher Education Policy at Birkbeck for half her time, is a leading national expert on student finance. She says she is looking forward to working at the Institute; "I see this as an exciting opportunity to undertake collaborative research with colleagues at the Institute and to develop closer links between Birkbeck and the Institute. "
Professor Callender is currently completing a study for Universities UK on the factors affecting the supply of part-time provision, as well as a longitudinal study on part-time students. She has been a Fulbright Scholar at Harvard and is a member of the UK Commission for Employment and Skills' expert panel.
David Watson joined the Institute in 2005 after 15 years as Director and Vice Chancellor at the University of Brighton. He was awarded a National Teaching Fellowship in 2008 and the Times Higher Education Lifetime Achievement
Award in 2009.
The MBA course team is located within the Centre for Higher Education Studies (CHES), a multidisciplinary research centre. CHES undertakes research on a variety of research and consultancy topics, many directly related to teaching on the MBA programme.
Editors' notes
Peter Scott will join the IOE in the New Year and Claire Callender will join in October.
Contacts at the IOE press office:
Diane Hofkins, press officer, 020 7911 5423, d.hofkins@ioe.ac.uk
James Russell, press assistant, 020 7911 5556, j.russell@ioe.ac.uk
The Institute of Education is a college of the University of London, specialising in teaching, research and consultancy in education and related areas of social science and professional practice. The Research Assessment Exercise in 2008 judged almost two-thirds of the work submitted by the IOE was internationally significant, and 35 per cent was regarded as "world leading". The IOE is a member of the 1994 group.
Birkbeck, University of London
Founded in 1823, Birkbeck has an unparalleled track record of successfully teaching mature students part-time, face-to-face in the evenings. Birkbeck enables 19,000 students from diverse social and educational backgrounds to participate in a broad range of higher education. Renowned for its world class research, it is a vibrant centre of academic excellence, with over 90% of Birkbeck academics being research active. This research directly informs curriculum development and teaching.
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