Vice-Chancellor's Group: UMT News
New VC, Patrick McGhee, talks Olympics, improving the student experience and the future of UEL
UEL has a new Vice-Chancellor, Professor Patrick McGhee, and he’s determined to improve the student experience. Professor McGhee spoke to Sports Journalism student Simon Bones about plans for new student awards, sports scholarships and the Olympic Park.
Why did you choose to move to UEL?
I’ve always liked London and UEL’s values are my values: around the importance of education, providing opportunity that might not otherwise exist and having high expectations of individuals – students and staff. I’m very honoured and proud to be here.
How do you plan on improving the student experience at UEL?
We want to sit down with students and hear from them on how we can improve the experience. I think we often overlook requests for new activities. Though I do think students are realistic that not everything can be afforded overnight, especially in the current economic climate.
It’s important to put the academic and intellectual challenge at the heart of the university experience but linking it all in to a more rounded experience, connected to community service, volunteering, culture, the arts, sport and so on. One of the things I am intending to do is to launch a new Vice-Chancellor student awards event which will celebrate the contributions of UEL students to the community, to the arts, to sport as well as recognising academic excellence.
In your opinion what is the number one areas that UEL is achieving in?
We are in the top six universities in the UK in terms of research on the basis of the quality of the work that people submit to the national Research Assessment Exercise.
We are also very strong in terms of making sure students are supported to stay the course. If you look at the national figures the drop out rate for UEL is calculated to be round about 13%-14%, in terms of a prediction based on the A-levels of students coming in, the courses we teach and so on. The drop out rate is actually only around 8% or 9% and that I think is testimony to the hard work of students, the advice they get before they come here on what courses to do and the teachers and other support staff who make sure students successfully complete their first year of study.
And what needs improving?
We need to fix the experience some students have in their final year. I’ve always believed at all the universities I’ve been to that universities can do more to support students whilst doing their dissertation, during final exams and with jobs.
Looking toward London 2012 what do you believe will be the long term benefits to UEL of having the Olympics in East London?
First of all there is the legacy around reputation and visibility, so people will remember UEL as part of the Olympic activity. We’ll have various teams staying on our campuses and we’ll have seven to eight hundred IOC accredited journalists on our campuses. Our number one priority is to get access to the Olympic Park after the Olympic Games have been concluded.
We want to build on the momentum of the Olympic Games to boost student sport. We are building the new sports facility at our Docklands campus which will be ready for use from around December 2011. We are hoping some of our students will be participants in the Olympic and Paralympic Games and to help that I announced at the Sports Awards a new cluster of scholarships for exceptional athletes, to support them while they are at UEL and on through their future studies.
