Professor James Vickers leaves his position as Director of the Doctoral College at the end of August.
The Doctoral College was established in 2015 to act as a unifying mechanism for the strategic development and management of PGR provision across the University.
As well as supporting doctoral training, it is responsible for driving efficiencies, enhancing processes and building bridges between disciplines.
The role of the Director is to provide strategic leadership to the Doctoral College, to ensure the quality and relevance of PGR training across the University and, in liaison with the Vice-President (Research and Enterprise) and the Vice-President (Education), to lead development of the strategy, standards and support for our PGR students.
One of James’ key objectives was to improve the training for doctoral researchers. He says:
When I started in this role, the training of doctoral researchers was fragmented and its importance was not always acknowledged. Since then we have developed strong links across the University to enable the Doctoral College, working in conjunction with Faculties and Professional Services, to provide high quality research training and professional development and help foster the development of a well-integrated, dynamic postgraduate research community.
VP Education, Alex Neill says:
James has been a tremendously effective Director of the Doctoral College, not least in building strong bridges between the College and Faculties and Professional Services, and in ensuring that the College is represented in the development of our education and research strategies.
His successor has a very solid foundation to build on, as we work to embed an institution-wide focus on the quality of the development opportunities that we offer to our doctoral researchers. James has demonstrated the qualities that we need in this role: tenacity, imagination, willingness to focus on the detail as well as the larger picture, and the ability to bring all of these qualities together in leadership of a crucial part of our mission in education, research and enterprise.
If you are interested in applying for this role, please send your CV and a letter detailing your suitability for the position to David Brown by 17:00 on Friday 10 March. Please note the commitment for this role is 0.5 FTE.
You can find more information about the Doctoral College here.
