Congratulations to our new National Teaching Fellows and to our GRAD project team

Congratulations to Elizabeth Smart, Principal Lecturer in Law and Andrew Middleton, Head of Academic Practice and Learning Innovation in LEAD, who have just been awarded National Teaching Fellowships by the Higher Education Academy (HEA), in recognition of how they have influenced teaching practice and inspired learners. A National Teaching Fellowship is the most prestigious individual award for excellence in teaching in higher education.

Fifty-five new National Teaching Fellows (NTFs) were revealed by the HEA last week, from across mission groups and drawn from a broad range of subject areas. Successful nominees were nominated by their institutions and submissions had to show evidence of three criteria: individual excellence, raising the profile of excellence and developing excellence.

We have also been shortlisted for the HEA’s newly-launched team award, the Collaborative Award for Teaching Excellence (CATE), which recognises teaching excellence by teams at higher education providers. Our collaborative project, Graduate Research and Development (GRAD), brought together seven academic and student support teams from across the University to embed induction activities, study skills, academic literacies, employability attributes and peer-led learning into a radically new curriculum for criminology. More information on the team can be found on the LEAD blog.

We are among fifteen institutions to have been shortlisted for the award; six of these will be awarded grants of £15,000 to disseminate their learning, and these will be announced in late January 2017.