With his appointment as President and Vice-Chancellor (Interim) announced earlier this year, today (Monday 11 March 2019) is Professor Mark Spearing’s first working day in post.
Mark joined the University in 2004, and has since held various academic and leadership roles, including Head of the School of Engineering Sciences and Pro Vice-Chancellor (International). He lives locally with his wife, who is also an employee of the University, and their three school-age children.
So that we can all get to know our President and Vice-Chancellor (Interim) a little better, we met with Mark to ask him a few questions.
Q) What makes you passionate about our University?
The University is strong and successful across the full range of its activities in education, research and enterprise. This only results from a community which is ambitious and committed to achieving the highest possible quality in everything it does – it is all about the people.
In the time that I have been at Southampton, I have continued to be impressed by its diversity, in terms of subject areas, student backgrounds, and the mixture of activities we undertake. I am particularly passionate about the importance of having a strong connection between our education, research and enterprise missions. I believe deeply that students’ education and the staff who teach them benefit from engagement with the creation of new ideas through research, but equally that the quality of the research we undertake, and our strength as researchers is improved by our educational mission. It is also very encouraging that activities such as Fish on Toast, Enactus and Future Worlds are tapping into a growing appetite for entrepreneurship among our students.
As interim Vice Chancellor, I am deeply committed to ensuring that the University is a great place to work and study, where our students and staff are fully supported to realise their potential and ambition and to have a great experience with us. I would also take this opportunity to celebrate the annual Science and Engineering Festival, which started this weekend, and has its focal point on Saturday 16 March. The festival offers a fantastic opportunity to inspire future generations, to engage with our neighbours and the City, and to come together as a community.
Q) How long have you worked at the University of Southampton?
I have been at the University for 15 years, having spent the 14 years prior in the United States. While at Southampton, I have taught a number of subjects including first year solid mechanics as well as elements of several materials and design modules.
My research interests are in how advanced materials can be used in engineering structures and systems. I remain active in research, including supervising several PhD students.
Q) What’s your biggest priority going to be as our President and Vice-Chancellor (Interim)?
Again, it is all about people and particularly ensuring that we retain, and grow our strength as a community. The risk of interim periods is that they introduce uncertainty, causing a loss of focus and resulting in ‘planning blight’. There is a challenge to keeping our focus on the priorities we have determined within our strategy. If I can hand over to our incoming President and Vice-Chancellor a strongly engaged community of staff and students, which has retained its focus on high quality education, research and enterprise activities, in a sustainable condition, then I will feel that I have served the University well.
Q) What stands out from your own student experience?
I received a very good education, which has stood me in good stead. I was lucky that I had some truly inspiring lecturers, and received a very good grounding in laboratory work and engineering drawing (now replaced by computer-aided design), which I particularly enjoyed.
The experiences of having some inspirational lecturers and classes stayed with me, and instilled in me a determination to be as good a teacher as possible when I had the opportunity myself.
Many of the key lessons I learned came from activities outside the curriculum. I enjoyed a variety of sports, and the social life that went with them, including being involved in running a couple of clubs and societies, which might count as my first step on my path to leadership positions! Perhaps most important and enduring was developing a strong network of friends, a good number of whom I remain in close contact today.
Q) If you were a student applying to study at our University tomorrow, which subject would you choose and why? You have an extensive engineering background, so we’re going to take that off the table as an option!
If I could go back a bit further than University, as a fifteen year old I remember having a very difficult choice between studying Maths, Physics and Chemistry at A-level and English, History and Geography. I believe that my parents exerted some very subtle influences on me, which I was oblivious to at the time, to head for the sciences and ultimately engineering.
If you had to push me, then I think that I would choose history, and I enjoy reading history and learning about the history of places that I visit to this day. I do believe that the choice of three or at most four A-levels is unnecessarily difficult and quite possibly counterproductive. I would personally prefer encouraging a broader range of subjects normally to be taken, including at University level. While there is much wrong in higher education in the USA, this is one area in which we might be able to learn from that country.
