Nick was the first in his family to attend university and this has shaped how he relates to his own students and the support he provides them for their own journeys through university. He has been a university lecturer for 21 years and is currently an Associate Professor at Kingston University, leading the undergraduate programmes in Pharmaceutical Sciences and is a Senior Fellow of Advance HE.
Nick is interested in the lives of all his students and this personal engagement with his learners has concentrated his efforts on improving outcomes for every student he teaches. As a result, the courses he leads have narrowed awarding gaps, improved National Student Survey (NSS) scores and increased the range of employment opportunities available to his students. Subsequently, he has helped initiate the setting up of a national “Bridging the Awarding Gaps” Network under the auspices of the Royal Society of Biology (RSB) to disseminate this work and the work of others in this area further.
Being an Education Theme Lead for the Physiological Society also means that Nick can bring some of his expertise and knowledge to bear in a national setting for the benefit of his colleagues, formulating and shaping policy and strategy in the discipline. In conjunction with the Physiological Society Nick has organised a number of international webinars around issues such as online learning, Equality, Diversity and Inclusivity, and working with students as partners. Further work with Advance HE/RSB has seen Nick run “New to Teaching” workshops for those colleagues new to academia. Thus, his practice emphasises the utility of role models and mentors in all aspects of the learning and teaching enterprise. He is a judge of the RSB’s UK Higher Education Bioscience Teacher of the Year prize and the Physiological Society’s David Jordan Teaching Award, having previously been awarded both these prizes himself.