The Dean of Environmental and Life Sciences, Professor Rachel Mills has been appointed as the new sponsor for Southampton’s Technician Commitment.
Rachel was the natural successor for this role, with over 70 technical staff in her faculty and a keen interest in promoting the valuable contributions that technicians make to the education, research and enterprise agenda across the University.
Rachel will take up her role as the new sponsor from March 2020 and will lead the Technician Commitment Self-Assessment Team as they implement the action plan, evaluate its impact and develop the next submission, due in 2021.
One of the first actions Professor Mills will be implementing is the appointment of three technical lead roles in the faculties of Medicine, Environmental and Life Sciences and Engineering and Physical Sciences. We will be seeking expressions of interest from within the technical community to help deliver on our action plan and address the key themes identified as part of the Technicians Commitment: Visibility, Recognition, Career Development and Sustainability.
Professor Mills said:
“I am delighted to become the sponsor of the Technician Commitment at Southampton. Our technicians bring a huge variety of specialist and technical skills to the University and many are also at the front-line of our student experience. I am delighted we will be appointing three new technical leads and look forward to working with them and many other technical staff to ensure we deliver on our action plan.”
The Vice-Chancellor, Mark E. Smith would like to extend his gratitude to Professor Bashir Al-Hashimi, Dean of Engineering and Physical Sciences for leading the University in developing its self-assessment and action plan, which was submitted in December 2019.
Professor Al-Hashimi commented:
“It has been a great pleasure working with those across the University who are committed to recognising the contributions of our technical staff. There is an excellent opportunity for the technical leads and the Self-Assessment Team to really enhance the visibility and recognition of technical staff at the University. I have no doubt this will be a great success under Rachel’s leadership.”
