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What we want to achieve

Date

WE ANNOUNCED the Leeds Institute for Teaching Excellence at the beginning of this year with a bit of a flourish, a vision and some bold plans. But for me, the Institute only feels properly real now: truly established, with a concrete existence to match the vision.

Up and running

Our home at 18 Beech Grove Terrace has been refurbished, with a striking red accent curving through its carpeted interior and – perhaps more importantly – state-of the art workplaces for our newly appointed Excellence & Innovation research fellows, Bee Bond and Lydia Bleasdale-Hill.

It has been a great pleasure over the last few weeks to send out calls for funded projects that will allow us to transform, evaluate and theorise the student education we provide.

We offer 5 year-long secondments to start in 2017-18, with £15k backing for each, and 10 Teaching Enhancement Projects, beginning this January, with £3k funding and partial secondments to the Institute.

Leading vision

If there are three words to epitomise our mission from now on it would be these:

Community: LITE will give time and space for sector-leading teaching innovation and scholarship, not just through funded projects but by drawing together the National Teaching Fellows, USEFs and specialists in pedagogy from around campus. Look out for our LITE ‘Work in Progress’ seminars on the Events page, showcasing the work of our affiliated teaching scholarship centres around campus.

Evidence: We’ve done so much to improve our curriculum, our digital infrastructure and our student support over the past 5 years. LITE will host evaluative projects that will tell us what we are doing right, what really works, and what needs further thought. It will help give us the evidence base to inform future projects and to satisfy the queries of TEF panels, prospective students and external commentators.

Impact: LITE will raise the visibility of our brilliant educators, give them digital profiles, bring them to the front of the University’s public profile. We will fund them to take their ideas and innovations to the world, helping to explain what student education is like at the ‘University of the Year’.

Supporting this vision and setting up the Institute for success are David Gardner, our deputy director, and our communications officers Stephanie Stones, leading on publications and events, and Leigh Dowd, who we’ve poached skilfully from a career in Politics to help define our digital presence and publicity. Rekha Parmar, office manager, keeps the Institute going.

Transforming

It has been amazing to watch the new student cohorts flood past the building over the last weeks, dodging cacti at the houseplant sale and weaving through the cries of Socialist Workers, the Christian Union and organic smoothie sellers outside. Settling into their new lives.

A timely reminder of what the University is about: the students.

The Leeds Institute for Teaching Excellence has been established for these students, and for the talented staff across the University who provide outstanding teaching and support for them.

Rafe Hallett