20.07.2004
Vice-Chancellor Professor Sir David Watson is to retire from the University of Brighton at the end of the next academic year.
In a letter to staff, Chair of the Board of Governors Sir Michael Checkland said, "I write to inform you that Sir David Watson will retire from the post of Vice-Chancellor in September 2005. Under his distinctive and distinguished leadership, the university has become one of the leading new universities in this country, recognised for its achievements both in teaching and research.
"The Board is naturally reluctant to lose David Watson, but pleased to have been able to keep him in Brighton for so long."
David Watson joined the then Brighton Polytechnic in 1990 as Director and since that time has overseen many major changes. The polytechnic became the University of Brighton in 1992 and is now one of the leading new universities in the country for both teaching and research.
The last decade has been one of major achievement. Student numbers have grown from 11,000 to 20,000, and the number of academic awards made each year from 3,000 to over 4,500.
External assessments of the quality of Brighton’s teaching and of graduate employment have ranked among the strongest in the country, and the last national assessment of research found more Brighton staff working at international standards of excellence than in any other ‘new’ university.
The university has invested heavily in its facilities with nearly £100m of capital development, including libraries, new student residencies, and sports facilities in both Brighton and Eastbourne. Among its key recent successes have been the opening of the Brighton and Sussex Medical School (a joint venture with the University of Sussex and the NHS) and the University Centre Hastings.
Partly as a consequence of developments like these, Brighton was recognised by the Sunday Times in 1999-2000 as their inaugural "University of the Year."
David Watson has contributed widely to developments in UK higher education, having been among the first members to serve on the new Funding Councils set up in 1988 and 1992. He was a member of the Paul Hamlyn Foundation's National Commission on Education, whose report was published in 1993, and of the National Committee of Inquiry into Higher Education chaired by Sir Ron Dearing, whose report was published in 1997. He has chaired the Long Term Strategy Group of Universities UK for the past six years. He has continued to research and write about higher education, and has lectured and led workshops in many different countries. He was knighted in 1998 for services to higher education.
His interests in the dialogue and collaboration between higher education and external stakeholders have been carried forward by his membership of business, community and cultural organisations. He is currently chair of the Brighton Festival, vice-chair of the Friends of the Brighton Pavilion, and a trustee of the Council for Industry and Higher Education, the Higher Education Policy Institute, and the Tom Paine Project in Lewes.
David Watson said, "It has been a privilege as well as a pleasure to work with the students and staff of the Polytechnic and then the University, who have achieved so much over the past two decades. Brighton deserves its reputation as a forward-looking and highly successful university, and I look forward to watching it go from strength to strength."
An advertisement for Sir David’s successor will appear in the press in September and it is hoped that an appointment can be made by Christmas in order that the new Vice-Chancellor will be able to lead the university from the start of the academic year 2005/06.
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