Two new Deputy Vice-Chancellors for the University of Teesside

The University of Teesside has appointed two new Deputy Vice-Chancellors. They are Professor Katherine Leni Oglesby as Deputy Vice-Chancellor (Academic) and Professor Michael Smith as Deputy Vice-Chancellor (Research & Enterprise). They took up their new posts this week.

Professor Graham Henderson, the University’s Vice-Chancellor, said: "Both Professor Oglesby and Professor Smith are highly regarded national figures within the higher education sector, with extensive and very successful senior management experience.

“They also have well established external networks at the highest possible level and I am confident that they will make a significant contribution to assisting me and my colleagues steer the University towards even greater success in the future.”

Professor Mike Smith Deputy Vice-Chancellor (Research & Enterprise).

With 25 years experience of research in higher education, Professor Smith is a physical scientist who worked in the Universities of Edinburgh and London before moving to the University of Leeds.

At Leeds, he was Dean of Research in the Faculty of Medicine, Dentistry, Psychology & Health, Director of R&D in the Leeds Teaching Hospitals NHS Trust and Chairman of MedIPeX Ltd, and a regional enterprise organisation concerned with technology transfer in the medical and health sector. He was only 37 when appointed Professor of Medical Physics in Leeds in 1989.

A Chartered Physicist; Registered Clinical Scientist; Fellow of the Institute of Physicists and Engineers in Medicine and Fellow of the Institute of Physics, Mike was the President of the Institute of Radiology in its Centenary Year in 1998. He was also a Higher Education Funding Council for England Research Assessment Panel Member in 1996 & 2001 and a member of the NHS Central R & D Committee and the Medical Research Council Medical Advisory Board.

With a personal research grant income, since 1990, of around £13m in addition to presiding over a faculty annual research expenditure of about £20m per annum, Professor Smith’s research output to date comprises over 150 refereed journal articles and four patents. He says: “Universities should be enquiring environments and just as learning and teaching is essential to them, so is research and scholarship.

“Teesside is already in the vanguard in terms of learning and teaching. My role is to ensure it moves forward on the research side by focusing on those areas where we have the potential to be leaders and where we can support the enterprise agenda.”

Professor Smith said he was attracted to the University at Teesside after visiting the campus ‘incognito’ in jeans and t-shirt. “Everyone was delightful and extremely helpful and friendly. That really swayed me, as did the compact, modern campus and the fact that Teesside appeared to be a university that knows where it is going. The University is clearly one with a strength of character and strong loyalty. That’s certainly my impression and it gives us a lot to build on, whether that be through widening participation or through research and enterprise.”

Professor Katherine Leni Oglesby Deputy Vice-Chancellor (Academic)

Professor Oglesby’s previous post was Pro-Vice-Chancellor at Manchester Metropolitan University (MMU) and Dean of the Faculty of Community Studies, Law and Education with 7,300 students and nearly 400 academic and support full-time equivalent staff. The faculty covered healthcare studies, law, education, psychology, speech pathology and social work and had an annual turnover of £14m.

In addition, Professor Oglesby had cross-institutional responsibility within MMU for learning & teaching, research, widening participation and equal opportunities.

Before joining MMU, she held academic and senior management posts at the universities of Leicester, Sheffield, Lancaster and Surrey, and was seconded to the policy division of the Higher Education Funding Council for England.

She is a Fellow of the RSA, former chair of the editorial panel for The British Journal of Educational Studies, President of the European Association for the Education of Adults, and former vice-chair of the Universities Association for Continuing Education (UACE) and the National Institute of Adult Continuing Education (NIACE). She was a member of the Greater Manchester Workforce Development Confederation Board and chaired both the Greater Manchester Aim Higher/Partnerships for Progression Steering Group and Greater Manchester Widening Participation Steering Group.

She said: “I am looking forward to joining the University of Teesside and have been most impressed with what I have seen so far of the University, its staff, and the quality and range of provision offered to its students.”

She believes there are great prospects for enhancing the University’s reputation further at a national and international level.

“Teesside is already known for the high quality of its learning and teaching, its widening participation track record, and the strong professional standing of its vocational courses. I will be looking to help to develop innovations which support the University’s academic expertise and its distinctive specialist areas. In particular, I support the links between teaching and research & enterprise activities and want to reinforce the links with the professional, industrial and rural communities in the region,” she said.

Since her appointment, Leni said she has been struck by the number of colleagues in universities across the UK who have told her how exciting a place Teesside is. “They have referred to the ‘buzz’ the University has and to its clear vision and the energy to pursue it. Many have also commented that its strength as an institution is not widely appreciated and that it is possibly hiding its lights under a bushel. I hope to help the various Teesside lights shine like beacons.”

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