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LSBU Business School Director of Education and Student Experience awarded Principal Fellowship

Angela Dalrymple, Director of Education and Student Experience (DESE) at LSBU Business School, has been awarded the national award of Principal Fellowship with Higher Education Association (PFHEA) Fellowship - the first from LSBU in over 4 years. Here, Angela shares her perspective along with commentary from the School Dean, Sarah Moore-Williams and Pro Vice-Chancellor (Education), Deborah Johnston.

What is the Principal Fellowship Award?

“The Principal Fellowship of the Higher Education Academy is a wonderful award to receive – it’s the highest level of UK HEA fellowship awarded to leaders in higher education, and it’s based on outstanding strategic leadership in academic, teaching and student learning development.

Principal Fellows are expected to champion HE policy and practice development at institutional, national and international levels.

How is the Principal Fellowship is awarded?

It can take a year or more to prepare for PFHEA – very stressful!

Every year the Advance HE panel considers potential Principal Fellows from all types of HE institutions. They award PFHEA based on 5 years or more of sustained strategic leadership in teaching, learning and academic practice. They look for exceptional strategic impact beyond the home institution, for sustained support of colleagues and students in high quality teaching and learning, and for the ability to champion HE academic practice and policy at a senior level.

What did you have to do to be awarded?

Since the 1990s I’ve been lucky enough to have amazing opportunities to use my previous experience in international business leadership, to apply transformational teaching and learning in higher education.

Working with great colleagues, I try to help students transform their lives, discover the amazing skills they have, and become what they want to be - that’s the hallmark of genuine applied and authentic education, and it’s what I really enjoy every day.

When I was at Imperial College, for example, we worked tirelessly with employers to rescue women from human trafficking, many of whom had very low self-esteem and had been horribly abused. We welcomed them so warmly and helped them turn their lives around to become self-employed entrepreneurs as part of our curriculum delivery. I was so proud of being told by these lovely students: “You are the first person who has ever believed in me all my life”.

Since joining LSBU, I can honestly say that the incredible bond between staff colleagues, and the genuine care we all have for our students, has been awe-inspiring. From the day I joined, the supportiveness, encouragement and bond between colleagues such as our amazing DESEs, Deans, the incredible Business School I work in, and our students, has been phenomenal.

Colleagues across LSBU are incredibly kind, great fun, and relentlessly positive, even in the face of often daily adversity, and everyone is so caring it make me very proud to be part of LSBU.

In the Business School we have recently redesigned all our curriculum and assessment to be more inclusive and work-ready, we have engaged employers at all levels of curriculum and assessment design, put students together with employers in case studies, placements and real-life work scenarios, and striven to bring the best out in all our amazing students, full time or part time, young or mature, from any background or walk of life.

It’s this kind of transformational impact that makes anyone proud to become a Principal Fellow of the HEA, and a member of such a fantastic community as LSBU.

What does this award mean to you and your role?

Such a lot! Personally, I was the first in my family to go to university from one of the largest state schools in beautiful Wales, and I was so lucky to have people to inspire me in my family, school and university.

Workwise, I still have so many amazing colleagues from every university and role I have worked in who inspire me every day, and the dedication we all have to making the lives of students and colleagues' better day by day never goes away.

In terms of LSBU Business School, where my colleagues are amazing, it’s always onwards and upwards with the great inspiration of our lovely Dean and colleagues.

In terms of my family – when you have kids who have been students as well, you know only too well the joy and heartache they go through, the hard work and costs they take on – and you just want to do your best for every student out there.

What will happen now you have this Principal Fellowship?

I hope to work with other lovely colleagues at LSBU who have PFHEA themselves to work as a community and inspire other colleagues to go for PFHEA – it’s hard work, but it’s so worth the effort.

And to carry on championing and putting into action what LSBU and other wonderful UK universities stand for – to give every one of our students the most incredible transformational experience of their lives, true and equal access to opportunity and employability, and to become what they find they really want to be. That’s such a great mission to aim for.”

Executive Commentary

Sarah Moore-Williams, Dean of LSBU Business School says:

I am so proud of Angela’s achievement, it is testimony of hard work, expertise and national impact and is very well deserved.

Professor Deborah Johnston, Pro-Vice Chancellor (Education) at LSBU shares her thoughts:

Achieving a PFHEA shows both a national and an institutional impact on teaching and learning. It is only awarded to highly experienced colleagues who are able to provide evidence of a sustained and effective record of impact at a strategic level in relation to teaching and learning. There are only 1,000 or so PFHEAs worldwide* and so this is at the pinnacle of external recognition. I’m delighted for Angela – it is well deserved and shows her commitment to excellence in academic practice. It is also wonderful for us at LSBU, to have our expertise recognized and rewarded externally.

Find out more about LSBU Business School.

*Advance HE, www.advance-he.ac.uk