National Networking with NTFs

26 Mar

Months of work by the National Teaching Fellows Committee are culminating this week with our NTF/CATE Symposium 28-29th March at Birmingham City University. I’m delighted with the quality of inputs to the programme, which provides a showcase for two separate strands alongside the workshops.

Firstly Pauline Kneale, Ruth Pilkington and Jenny Winter are leading a whole day strand on day 1 on Evaluating teaching Impact, based on their HE-funded research, and secondly the flourishing Professors in Preparation scheme led by NTFs Julie Hulme, Liz Mossop, Peter Draper and me, with Debbie Locke will be helping colleagues think about how to prepare for  applications for professorship​s in learning and teaching, as part of the burgeoning Professors in Preparation (PiP) network. The PiP mentoring scheme will be launched at the symposium, and Liz and I will be leading a session on Using and Developing Mentoring Skills; the slides are here:  SlidNTF-Pip-w.pptx (517 downloads)

The last session of the symposium enabled me, Kay Sambell of​ Napier University and Linda Graham of Sunderland University to celebrate frivolity, food, fun as well as furthering the causes we believe in by Subverting the System by Enjoying Ourselves. (see photo!) There were slides, but honestly you had to be there to gain the full experience! But we are likely to publish an output from the session subsequently, because we are developing and expanding our ideas about how people can survive the vagaries of cash-strapped higher education by helping out one another through academic altruism.

The AGM for the Association of National Teaching Fellows is at 12.30 on Friday 29th in room SCT209 of the Mary Seacole Building at Birmingham City University’s Edgbaston campus and all NTFs, whether attending the symposium or not, are warmly invited to participate.