Higher education leadership
From lecturer to Academic Team Lead, building the systems that help a large and diverse student community succeed.
The challenge
Fairfield School of Business delivers university programmes in partnership with three UK universities, serving a student community that is large, diverse and often new to higher education. Many students are the first in their families to study at degree level, and many balance study with work and caring responsibilities. Institutions like this are where widening participation actually happens, and they succeed or fail on the quality of their teaching, coordination and support.
My role
I joined FSB's Leicester campus in June 2024 as a Lecturer in Business, teaching subjects across academic development, critical thinking, research skills, business management and related areas. I became a Course Coordinator, and now serve as Academic Team Lead for the campus.
The approach
My focus has been turning goodwill into systems. Individual lecturers caring about students is necessary but not sufficient. What sustains quality is the machinery around them: fair timetabling and teaching allocation, structured induction for new staff, mentoring for trainee lecturers, clear escalation routes for student support, and moderation practices that keep assessment consistent across partners.
I have led work on staff induction and development, built shared resources and standardisation practices for academic teams, and coordinated engagement and attendance processes that catch struggling students early. Working across three university partnerships means aligning each partner's requirements without burying staff in duplicate process.
What changed
The team I support now runs on documented, repeatable systems for induction, mentoring, allocation and quality assurance rather than individual memory. Student success and engagement sit at the centre of how the campus plans, in line with the sector's regulatory expectations on continuation and outcomes. And a steady flow of new lecturers has been inducted and mentored into confident teaching staff.
Evidence
Context. FSB's partnerships with Bath Spa University, Birmingham Newman University and Ravensbourne University London, and its Leicester campus, are publicly documented. The account of my role is my own; internal institutional detail is deliberately not published here.
What I learned
Teaching in a widening participation context is the most direct education work I have ever done. At Steamledge I built tools that reached learners through screens and schools. Here, the student is in front of you, and the difference between a student who continues and one who drops out is often one well-designed system and one attentive conversation.
Leadership in education is mostly the unglamorous work of making good practice repeatable. I find that more satisfying, not less.