MyGlasgow News

Recognising Excellence in Teaching (RET) is the University of Glasgow’s fellowship scheme for staff who teach or support learning. It’s a dual award: by successfully participating in RET you will be awarded a Glasgow RET Fellowship AND a Fellowship of the Higher Education Academy (HEA). 

Each year there are three opportunities to apply to the RET scheme. The next application deadline is 15 May. If you’re thinking of applying, or just want to find out more, come along to the next introductory workshop, 12noon on Wednesday 12 April in Southpark House.

So far, UofG has more than 800 fellows across the four categories of recognition (click for Campus e-News case studies!): Associate Fellow, Fellow, Senior Fellow and Principal Fellow.

Whichever category you want to try for, colleagues in the Learning Enhancement and Academic Development Service (LEADS) are ready to advise and support you through the application process. Come to the intro workshop to find out more.

HEA scheme vs UofG RET scheme

Campus e-News spoke with Jim Anderson, Professor of Veterinary Neurology and Neurosurgery in the School of Veterinary Medicine. Earlier in his career at UofG Jim achieved an Associate Fellowship with the HEA’s predecessor, the Institute for Learning and Teaching in Higher Education (ILT). Now he’s a RET Principal Fellow too, putting him in the unique position of being able to compare the direct and internal schemes.

What inspired you to engage with RET?

“I want to raise the profile of my teaching colleagues. Teachers are such a big part of Schools like ours with professional programmes and it’s important that their efforts are recognised. The VP for Learning & Teaching is encouraging more work on describing teaching profiles and giving people peer-recognition; I saw RET as a way for me to engage with that while also benchmarking my own career. RET was an opportunity to show that everybody could potentially make it to the highest level.”

How was the application process?

“Many years ago my colleagues and I in the Faculty of Veterinary Medicine engaged with the ILT Associate Fellowship scheme. One of the issues with direct schemes, like the ILT’s then and the HEA’s now, is that everything happens off-site. Being taken away from the institution does bring you into contact with others, but you have to cope with the time factor and the resource factor. I thought the more straightforward RET scheme - a parallel process with local support - was a very good idea.

“The support from the RET team was extremely helpful - it would have been very difficult to go through the PF process without it.

“The application involves a lot of reflection, which was quite new to me. These days the big professional bodies are all looking for reflective practitioners so we’re busy introducing our students to the concepts and practices. But my generation comes from a different background so there’s a big learning curve. Not everyone finds it straightforward to think through why they chose to have an experience, what that experience gave them, how they might build on it, and how to use it as a springboard to develop their careers. Some are embarrassed about being so personal, particularly when it’s part of an assessment and other people will be reading your reflections.

“But the support of the RET team meant I could share the pain! In the end I found it interesting to share experiences and understand what they meant, but if I’d been doing it by myself it would have been much more difficult to reach some of the conclusions.”

Advice to potential applicants?

“The most difficult parts were getting all the evidence lined up, and choosing appropriate references, so make the most of the RET team’s support with that.

“Realise that you can use this as a tool for career progression: the Principal Fellowship is aligned with elements of the Professorial level in the Learning Teaching and Scholarship track, so the successful award of PF establishes a prima facie case for the Leadership and Management criterion for that track. Senior Fellowships are a way of benchmarking your career and reflecting on where you’ve got to and where you want to go. And both give you tools for reflection.”

What’s next for you?

“At this stage in my career, it’s more about developing others than personal development. I intend to make sure the School and the profession has individuals who are prepared, engaged, and ready to take this sort of activity forward.”

Find out more

• Professor Jim Anderson
• Recognising Excellence in Teaching (RET)

The next application deadline is 15 May. If you’re thinking of applying, or just want to find out more, come along to the next introductory workshop, 12noon on Wednesday 12 April in Southpark House.

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First published: 3 March 2017