The Engineering and Physical Sciences and Mathematics Foundation Year at the University of Surrey is consistently ranked as one of the highest performing programme areas in the institution. Working with a relatively high proportion of disadvantaged and neurodiverse students, the teaching team is driven by a shared educational vision to develop confident, academically resilient learners, capable of successfully completing an undergraduate degree programme. The added value this imparts on the cohort is reflected in institution-leading student satisfaction scores as well as academic performance statistics, typically indicating a +3% performance advantage of Foundation Year students on undergraduate programmes, compared to their direct entry peers.
A cornerstone of this successful and inclusive academic development process is the embedding of academic and mathematical skills across the programmes. This has been achieved through deep and continuous collaboration of the core team of six teaching track lecturers. A key factor contributing to the success of the team methodology and its outstanding programme outcomes lies in the sense each team member has of being a stakeholder in the successful achievement of those outcomes. Shared values and buy-in to the collective vision are cultivated through formal schemas, such as bespoke probationary targets, clearly defined role responsibilities and negotiated development trajectories.
These are coupled with more informal strategies such as ‘Wagon Wheel Wednesdays’ and open, continuous and shared dialogue between team members, the Foundation Year student cohort and partner colleagues across the institution. The team’s innovative and forward-thinking development approaches have attracted institution-wide interest and recognition. Their influence has evolved to such an extent that the team now spearheads high-impact pedagogical initiatives at the forefront of institutional change.