Robert Slater

Biography

I am independent consultant in management of academic institutions. I am currently acting as the principal assessor for accreditation of Honours BSc degrees for the Society of Biology. I am currently on committees for QAA, HEFCE and the Society of Biology. I help Universities in their appointment of senior members of staff and I mentor staff new to senior management. My key skill is to apply pragmatic solutions to academic challenges (e.g. solve "cannot see the wood for the trees" or over complexity type of problems). My last full time salaried post was to manage a substantial budget of over £12m and I was responsible for over 70 academic staff and over 1,100 students. I have been a Director of Academic Quality and led an institution through QAA reviews and chaired many working parties for example on academic regulations, the structure of the academic calendar, student retention and the use of MIS systems. I chaired the development of many new degrees in a range of subjects, eg MPharm, agriculture, clinical sciences. I still teach, particularly gene expression, and can provide short courses in this subject and on the general use of radioactivity in bioscience laboratories (I edited a book on this subject for the OUP A Practical Approach series) Specialties: management in an academic setting, biochemistry, genetics, use of radioactivity in the biosciences, distance learning, short course teaching

Research Interest

University of Leeds