FEATURE
A New Chapter Ulster University Vice Chancellor, Professor Paul Bartholomew, tells Emma Deighan that despite moving to a hybrid teaching model during the pandemic, community and bricks and mortar settings will always be the priority.
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rofessor Bartholomew was appointed to the role just as the pandemic took hold, which presented a massive challenge for the former NHS Diagnostic Radiographer. With the £364m Belfast Campus due to launch and a new medical school in Magee opening its doors to students, he faced a series of challenges from the onset, but today those hurdles have spawned many new beginnings for the high-ranking educational institution. “We’re always motivated by doing the right thing for students and staff,” he begins. “Our staff responded magnificently to the pandemic, with teaching moving online until the beginning of this year when we introduced a more hybrid way of teaching and during that time we had many achievements.” Among those achievements were surging industry rankings and awards. Ulster University was shortlisted in a small pool of five (out of 135) UK Universities for the most prestigious accolade in The Times and Sunday Times Good University Guide: the ‘University of the Year’. It was also included in the top 50 universities for the first time in the Complete University Guide (CUG) 2022 League Table. After a third successive rise in these rankings, Ulster University rose 16 places from 60th (2021) to 44th (2022) out of 130 UK universities. This is the highest rank the University has achieved in the Guide’s 15-year history. It was also placed second in the UK for postgraduate researcher satisfaction in the Postgraduate Research Experience Survey (PRES 2021). The national benchmarking exercise surveyed postgraduate research students from 89 universities across the UK
about their postgraduate research experience. “We’re not an institution that chases accolades,” Professor Bartholomew says. “We are focused on enhancing the experience we provide and if we do well, we say thank you and we’ll take it. We’ll continue to do the best we can for staff and students and as long as we continue to do the right thing, we’ll be in a good place.” Behind the scenes that commitment to doing the best they can is evident with the Magee, Coleraine and Belfast campuses undergoing significant investments while Ulster University’s course portfolio’s expansion is garnering praise. A new chapter was marked at the Magee Campus in Derry-Londonderry when the newly refurbished building welcomed the very first 70 students to its new School of Medicine. “We had a full uptake for that course. What we’re trying to do there is take a cohort of students that will continue to work and stay in the North West,” says Professor Bartholomew. Twenty eight students in the course are from ROI, with three international students, two from England, and the rest from NI. “That’s an outstanding achievement,” he adds. The Magee Campus’ new medical school will add to the University’s reputation for excellence in life sciences and the City Deals projects in the North West will attract funding to build on the campus’ interdisciplinary research prowess and in turn deliver economic benefits for the region. Ulster University is also relocating its undergraduate health sciences provision from Jordanstown to Magee, while a new paramedic degree has also started on the campus. “We’re really building a hub in the North West for health sciences but we also have fantastic capability in data analytics too and
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we’ve recently opened an £11m teaching block to ensure that campus continues to have the highest levels of student satisfaction,” he says. Most of the university’s Jordanstown Campus’ courses will relocate in due course, with the bulk of them heading to the new Belfast campus. That facility opened this term and will return a £1.4bn contribution to the NI economy. “Teaching began on the new campus this academic year and is catalysing and reimagining of the teaching and learning experiences that are deployed across all of our campuses, accelerating innovation in how we do things.” This campus will help bring focus to the Belfast Regional City Deals projects, including the Screen and Media Innovation Lab (SMIL), which will help to maximise the benefits of this sector for the Belfast Region, and beyond, by providing a dedicated physical infrastructure to support the rapidly expanding activity in virtual video and film production. “There will be a lot of research and innovation which will have a direct impact on industry,” says Professor Bartholomew. Meanwhile the university’s Jordanstown campus is still the focus of many programmes until they move to their new locations. “Going forward, we will still retain facilities there, but with a much smaller footprint.” This includes the more practical facilities, including expansive outdoor spaces, for sports-discipline students and for the provision of sports facilities for the wider student body, while the rest of the site “will become an asset over time that we will sell in due course.” Meanwhile the Coleraine campus will retain its identity as a UNESCO centre through the School of Education, “being an internationally
