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Provost's Perspective: Introducing myself to you

5 December 2014

This week has been a momentous one for UCL - on 2 December we merged with the Institute of Education, creating a new institution with more than 35,000 students and confirming UCL as the biggest higher education institution in London.

UCL IOE

I'd like to take the chance to extend a very warm welcome to all IOE students who have joined us. I think that as you get to know UCL, you'll find that this is immensely vibrant institution with boundless opportunities - I hope that you embrace these with energy and enthusiasm.

I also want to introduce myself properly to you all. When I was a student, I had no real idea how universities functioned and were organised at their highest level and I certainly had no clue about what a Vice-Chancellor was, who was in the post, nor what their role entailed.

At UCL, for various reasons, the equivalent post is called President & Provost and I have been in that position since September 2013 - after nine years as Vice-Chancellor of the University of Leeds. It has been suggested to me that, as UCL students you would like to know more about my position, what I do and a little bit more about my interests, motivation and personal background.

The best job in higher education

I think I have the best leadership role in the whole of UK higher education. In part, this relates to the history and academic excellence of UCL and the fact that it is a comprehensive multi-faculty institution, but it also relates to my view of the ethos, values and characteristics of UCL and its staff and students. In short, it is quite simply a wonderful place to work and to be an academic leader.

My role entails being the chief executive officer, the principal academic officer and the principal administrative officer for UCL. In brief, I am responsible for everything that happens and if it goes wrong, it is down to me. The plus side is that if things are going well, I also get to take some credit!

I am also the accounting officer, formally responsible to government for the expenditure of the public monies that we receive. I am, of course, supported in all these responsibilities by six vice-provosts (for Research, Education and Student Affairs, Enterprise and London, Operations, International and Health), as well as 10 deans (of each faculty) and now the Director of the IOE as well as the Director of Finance and the directors of Professional Services. I am very fortunate to work with a formidable senior team, who between them have a huge amount of experience of running large complex institutions.

My medical roots

My academic background was as a clinical academic, graduating in medicine from the University of Southampton in 1977. After initial junior hospital doctor positions in Nottingham and Wessex, I first took up a lectureship in medicine at Southampton in 1982.

I won't bore you with more detail, but if you want to see my progression through the ranks, details can be found here. During my clinical academic career, I was involved in patient care as a consultant hepatologist, in teaching and in liver research.

I was interested in the cell and molecular pathogenesis of liver fibrosis - we were the first to show that this was a reversible process and we described the mechanisms by which that occurs. At the time, it was a paradigm shift in our understanding of liver disease.

Throughout my career, I was asked to take on various leadership roles with ever increasing responsibility, initially as research lead, then as Head of the Medical School and eventually as Dean of the Faculty of Medicine, Health and Life Sciences - a role not dissimilar to (but perhaps not as large as) Vice-Provost Health at UCL.

At one stage, when I was on sabbatical in New York, as a Fulbright fellow, I went back to the lab to rekindle my research. Two interesting things happened to me that I wasn't expecting - I really missed leadership responsibility and I also discovered that younger researchers in the lab were much better than me, particularly with the more recent technological advances. The writing was thus clearly on the wall, and I decided to pursue a leadership role for the rest of my career.

Challenging myself

At that stage, I was thinking of further national and international leadership roles in academic medicine, but a very close colleague from Southampton days, Professor Eric Thomas, by then Vice-Chancellor at Bristol, persuaded me to look at Vice-Chancellor (or equivalent posts).

I applied to the University of Leeds and was appointed and the rest is history. I really enjoyed stepping beyond academic medicine into the wider world of a comprehensive multi-faculty university. It was perhaps the most invigorating aspect of stepping up to that level - enjoying the complexity of leading an academic institution beyond one's own immediate discipline.

I was often asked in Leeds if I would eventually move back south. My standard answer was to say that if I felt that my best work had been done at Leeds and that one of the big positions in London became free, and in particular UCL, I would probably want to take a look. I didn't for one minute think that such an outcome would come to pass, but remarkably in 2013 exactly that happened.

Fantastic parental support

What about my personal background and how that influences my approach to being President and Provost of UCL? I was born in Purley, Surrey, and initially brought up near Croydon. Both my parents left school at the age of 14, and I was the first in my extended family to go to university at all, and certainly the first to become a doctor.

My father was a cabinet-maker by trade and when I was three years old, he moved to Harlow New town to start his own business. I believe he was attracted by the start-up support that was available at the time for such ventures.

We initially lived in a council house, but as his business flourished, we eventually had a house that my parents owned. By then, my mother was working in administrative posts in schools - but later on, for most of her working life, she became a probationer's assistant - a role that she really loved.

They were both fantastic at persuading me to study and to find my way in life by working hard at the local state school, Burnt Mill Comprehensive. I was lucky that this was one of the first comprehensive schools in the country, and as such it attracted dedicated teaching staff and a wonderful head teacher, called Ray Stirling (sadly now deceased).

I flourished under his guidance and managed to get a place at Southampton medical school. I still go back to Burnt Mill whenever asked to help raise aspirations, demystify universities and encourage the next generation to take the plunge and to go to university.

My core values

Not surprisingly, my personal background, academic career and leadership career, all have an influence on my thoughts and our strategy for UCL. Access, social mobility and social justice feature prominently in my thinking, but this has to be in the context of academic excellence in research and education and the link between the two.

I have always been very naturally ambitious and that always extends beyond the personal, to being very ambitious for the organisation that I work for.

Collectively, we have put together an outstanding and ambitious strategy for UCL. Please read it and understand that I am heavily committed to you as students and that I wish to do my very best to inspire you to achieve beyond even your wildest expectations.

During my tenure as President & Provost, I will work tirelessly to improve everything that supports and enhances the student experience. If you see me in the corridors, do feel free to stop me and say hello.

I will be coming across many of you in the course of my visits to faculties and departments of UCL and I look forward to that enriching experience. Finally, I wish you all the best during your time here at UCL.

Professor Michael Arthur

UCL President & Provost

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