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Award-winning leadership development

27 November 2010

Martin Udwin of Human Resources with the award

The University’s support for developing researchers into the leaders of the future has been recognised with a prestigious award from Times Higher Education.

The Leadership and Management Development Programme for Research Team Leaders helps Principal Investigators (PI) and new or aspiring PIs to develop support networks, understand the strategic priorities of the institution and develop practical skills.

The Programme was nominated in the Outstanding Contribution to Leadership Development category and beat off competition from five other universities to win the award.

Speaking about the award, Professor Terry Threadgold, Pro Vice-Chancellor, Staff and Diversity said: "Winning this award is such well deserved recognition for Jayne Dowden, Sue Midha, Martin Udwin and all the others in Human Resources involved in developing and delivering this programme for our staff. They all deserve our congratulations and thanks. Staff feedback on the quality of the programme was a key reason for the award together with the huge impact it has had on our staff and the organisation. Over 100 Cardiff PIs have now elected to complete the programme - more than the total trained by all other universities across the UK. This is a tremendous achievement."

The University's approach to preparing researchers for leadership and management roles was described by the judges as "rigorous and comprehensive." The judges agreed that Cardiff was a '"deserving winner" and said the institution was "probably the most committed to this kind of development activity in the UK."

The Leadership and Management Programme runs over four to six months and helps participants develop, amongst other skills, greater self awareness, time management, practical research team leadership and a better understanding of the University processes and procedures.

Since 2007, the University has run nine programmes with 104 researchers from all disciplines: sciences, medical, social sciences, engineering and humanities.

The University’s provision of comprehensive and integrated support to help all early career researchers, both postgraduate researchers and research staff, to develop their transferable and career development skills was also shortlisted for the Awards in the Outstanding Support for Early Career Researchers category.

The Times Higher Awards are higher education’s ‘Oscars’ and recognise ground-breaking work undertaken by UK higher education institutions. There were almost 500 entries across the 18 categories of the awards, which are now in their sixth year.