Senior learning and teaching group continues to expand at Imperial College

Imperial’s teaching leadership continues to grow, as new appointments are confirmed in postgraduate professional development and maths education.

Newly appointed as Director of Cross-Curricular Mathematics Education, Dr Philip Ramsden began his career teaching A-level Maths and Further Maths, but has for many years worked in the Department of Mathematics at the College. Phil is also a leading contributor to the College’s work with schools, having run a wide variety of programmes for pupils and teachers. He develops and commissions e-learning resources in Mathematics across the College and is a regular masterclass speaker, especially via the Royal Institution.

Alongside Dr Ramsden, Dr Janet De Wilde has been newly appointed to a senior leadership role in the Graduate School. Murray MacKay sat down with Dr De Wilde to talk about her varied career and her hopes for the future of teaching at the College.

Janet brings to the Graduate School 30 years of experience of working in higher education. She initiated a retreat programme to support the development and wellbeing of doctoral researchers, and has overseen the extensive redevelopment of the Global Fellows programme.

From 1988-2005, Janet was first a researcher and then an academic at Imperial. For over 17 years, she specialised in Magnetic Resonance Imaging and led a research team. From 2007 to 2011, Janet was at the University of Edinburgh as Executive Manager for a major Scotland research pool for neuroimaging. During this time she oversaw the appointment and development of PhD students and postdocs.

“Imperial’s education community has evolved significantly over the years and it is great to see the growing recognition of learning and teaching across College.” said Dr Janet De Wilde.

“My priorities are to ensure that my team develop an excellent range of online postgraduate development opportunities to complement and to support our face-to-face offering. We have a growing number of online postgraduates with the launch of various new online masters, and they require access to professional development. There are also doctoral students based at locations both within the UK and overseas that may find accessing our face to face provision challenging.

“Imperial’s education community has evolved significantly over the years and it is great to see the growing recognition of learning and teaching across College. The Learning and Teaching Strategy has provided an excellent framework to drive developments in the Graduate School’s educational practice.

“My career pathway has led me to work in cross-institutional roles at several universities. Having worked in a range of organisations, the need to adapt to different institutional cultures has shown me that our students need to develop and recognise adaptability and flexibility as key attributes. Furthermore, my experience of visiting many STEM university departments showed me the importance of active-learning and student engagement.

“In the future I believe we will see more collaborative learning and teaching between the professional services and departments at Imperial. We have so much untapped potential to improve connections in departments across the College.”