New role for Prof David Fearn

International Dean

At the time of restructuring in 2010, in addition to his duties in the newly formed School of Mathematics & Statistics, David took on two broader roles. He was the founding Dean of Learning & Teaching in the College of Science & Engineering and was also appointed to the position of International Dean. Initially he had responsibility for the whole of the Americas, before the appointment of a new Dean for Latin America allowed David to focus on the strategically important North American region. After a period as Acting Vice Principal and Head of College (which meant passing on the L&T Dean role), David has now partially retired in order to focus on the International Dean role.

Over the past five and a half years, David has significantly grown this role. He oversees the University’s strategic research partnerships with Columbia University, McGill University and the University of Hong Kong and was responsible for introducing the Early Career Mobility Scheme that is a key mechanism to support the growth of these partnerships. The other major part of the job involves developing the student exchange and study-abroad partnerships which bring North American students to Glasgow, typically for a semester. The benefit of this is that these students either pay a fee (“study-abroad”) or create a place in their home institution for a Glasgow student (“exchange”). With the University’s strategic aim of achieving international mobility for 20% of students, the latter is of increasing strategic importance, and the international fee income is a key income stream for of Schools’ budgets. Other responsibilities include leading the relationship with the Fulbright Commission (the University now sponsors an annual postgraduate scholarship and a visiting professorship; Clark Barwick was the first), alumni relations and the Carnegie Lecture.

If you want to know more, David would be delighted to have a chat. A key message is that the information in the online Course Catalogue for your courses needs to be self-contained and sufficiently informative for a student or a faculty member in an overseas institution to understand the content and level of the course, to determine its suitability for a visiting student.