Mark

When did you join Weston College? 

December 2017, having previously worked at North Devon College, South Devon College, Truro College, Cornwall Colleges, University of St. Mark and St.John.   

Why did you join Weston College? 

There are very few providers of Environmental Health degrees in the UK, UCW is the nearest provider to my home and so when a job vacancy arose I was keen to get it, even though the college is more than a hundred miles from where I live. 

How do you spend your day? 

There isn’t really a normal day. Teaching days might involve two or three lectures of about three hours each. Non-teaching days involve tutoring students, course administration and development, speaking to employers, recruitment, speaking to colleagues in other universities and local authorities, plus CPD and research. 

How has the College supported your career development? 

I am invited to a lot of professional meetings, workshops, conferences, and so on. I am fortunate to have been given the autonomy which allows my colleagues and I to attend a lot of these. This is important as there are frequent changes in our subject area and we need to keep up to date. We are also encouraged to get involved in research whenever we want to. 

What have you been involved in while working at Weston College? 

With colleagues, I was involved in writing the BSc (Hons) Public and Environmental Health and BSc (Hons) Environmental Health Practitioner. I am the lecturer for some of the modules on these programmes and look after a lot of the course administration. As we have a lot of students who live far afield we teach in a hybrid way (in class and online simultaneously) and as a result of this we have had to learn how to use new technology. This involved a lot of trial and error and fumbling around! I have also taught some modules on other degree programmes.   

What’s the best thing about working at Weston College? 

I work with an extremely professional and highly motivated team. Our students are exceptional and good fun. Environmental Health is a very wide ranging subject area and always fascinating. In summary, this means that I spend my days in the company of people I like, talking about things I am interested in.