Professor Alex Neill has started in his new role as Pro Vice-Chancellor (Education). He replaces Professor Debra Humphris who has joined Imperial College London. Alex was previously Head of Philosophy and most recently Associate Dean for Education and Student Experience in Humanities.
Alex takes up his new role at an important time for the Education agenda at the University, with an Institutional Review recently completed, the Curriculum Innovation project in full swing, and important decisions to be made to ensure that we recruit high quality students in 2013 and 2014.
Alex says: “We’re part of an increasingly competitive market for the most talented students. We’ll need to be able to communicate very clearly that we are an institution that offers distinctive opportunities for our students, and that our curricular and extra-curricular offerings are second to none.”
Before moving back to Southampton, where he took his undergraduate degree, Alex taught at Pennsylvania State University, Trinity University, San Antonio and the University of St Andrews.
Alex is keen for the University to develop campuses that are intellectually and artistically alive, and to open up extra-curricular intellectual opportunities for the University community. He says: “At the same time as we’re embedding in the curriculum opportunities for students to broaden their studies beyond their particular degree programme, I’d like to see us maximise opportunities for our staff – all of our staff – to take advantage of the wide variety of intellectual activity that takes place across the University.”